David K. Scott - Penology (SAGE Course Companions) (2008)

Penology

SAGE COURSE COMPANIONS K N O W L E D G E A N D S K I L L S for S U C C E S S

Penology David Scott

© David Scott 2008 First published 2008 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044 SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 33 Pekin Street #02-01 Far East Square Singapore 048763 Library of Congress Control Number: 2007932778 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4129-4810-4 ISBN 978-1-4129-4811-1 (pdk)

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contents

Part one

Penology

1.1 Thinking like a penologist: an introduction to your course companion Part two Core areas of the curriculum Running themes in penology 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11

Justifications of punishment Theorising about prisons and punishment Sources of penal knowledge Comparative penologies The history and aims of imprisonment Penal policy Penal administration and prisoner populations Sociologies of prison life Penal accountability Probation and community penalties Future directions and alternative visions

Part three Study, writing and revision skills (in collaboration with David McIlroy) 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

How to get the most out of your lectures and seminars Writing a dissertation Essay-writing hints Revision hints Exam hints

Part four

Additional resources

Glossary Bibliography Index

2 13 14 16 29 42 55 68 81 95 110 125 136 146 161

162 166 172 180 184 193 194 213 223

p a rt o n e p e n olo g y

2 PENOLOGY

1.1 thin kin g lik e a p e n olo gist: a n intro d u ctio n to yo ur c o urs e c o m p a nio n

Introduction to the series Welcome to the Sage Course Companion: Penology. Many people are drawn to the study of punishments, crime control and other means of responding to wrongdoing and social deviance. Those who harm, and how we should best respond to those harms, fascinate us. This focus on punishment and penal institutions, such as the prison, and their possible justifications is the remit of what is called ‘penology’. Students can approach penological subject matter from various different academic disciplines, such as history, social policy, or the social sciences. The study of penology is a fast-growing area in many universities and, while there are many specialist books and introductory textbooks, it is difficult for those who are new to the subject to work out what best to read and in what order. The intention of this book is to provide you with a onestop, easy-to-use reference guide that covers the main themes of prison and punishment modules. The book is not intended to act as a replacement for lectures, textbooks, journal articles or specialist contributions in the field, but rather as a complement to such materials. In short, the aim of this book is to help you to get the most from your studies. If this text can either clarify and make sense of a complex penological debate, stimulate your interest, encourage you to look at issues in more depth, or help you use your imagination to start thinking more creatively about how social

THINKING LIKE A PENOLOGIST: AN INTRODUCTION TO YOUR COURSE COMPANION 3

problems can be conceived of or addressed, then it will have achieved its aim—and perhaps much more.

How to use this book This book is specifically designed to help undergraduate and postgraduate students on prison and punishment modules to succeed. This includes students on a range of degree programmes, including those studying law, humanities, anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, health studies, political sciences, business management, and criminology and criminal justice. The book introduces some of the common principles and concepts of the discipline; it provides hints, tips and handy summaries of the main themes and issues; and, ultimately, it aims to enhance your understanding of, and ability to use, penological knowledge. For undergraduate students, this book can act as a revision guide and can help with passing exams. It should help you to structure and organise your thoughts, and it should enable you to get the most from your textbooks and the other reading that you do as part of your course. The book is also a helpful starting point for students doing a dissertation or postgraduate research project in penology, especially those who have not previously undertaken a penology module. I also hope that the book appeals to the general reader who is looking for a straightforward introduction to, and summary of, penology that is easily digestible and can be read relatively quickly. Overall, the course companion should help you to challenge common-sense and populist assumptions about ‘crime’ and punishment, and help you to think critically about the subject matter. Course companions are designed to point you in the direction of key thinkers and key ideas, and to give you the briefest of introductions to their work and how to put their work in context. This, of course, is only a starting point, which must be followed up with wider reading and reflection. You should use your companion to supplement, not to replace, other sources, such as recommended course textbooks. In addition, you must continue to follow the course you have undertaken. Familiarise yourself with lecture content and seminar questions, because these will give you the best guide to what your examiner will be looking for in your exams and coursework. Look carefully at your penology module booklets, and at the readings and themes that they highlight. Unless you are a general reader, you need only focus on the themes that are identified by the module or course you are studying. Look to the

4 PENOLOGY chapters that reflect the course and what is most relevant to you at this given moment. Finally, the key to success at undergraduate and postgraduate level is wider reading. When you have finished a chapter, go to the actual sources and texts cited here and read them for yourselves. This is the best and most enjoyable way of studying.

Structure of the book and key features The book is divided into four main parts. Part one provides you with an introduction to your course companion and explains how you can make the most of using this book. You are given a brief introduction to the discipline, followed by guidance on how you can learn to think like a penologist. Here, you are given advice on how to enter the mindset of penal experts and you are introduced to the kind of terminology that they use. Part two starts by identifying the ‘running themes’ in penology that recur throughout the core curriculum, which is then overviewed in the following 11 chapters. These begin with a discussion of the philosophical and sociological accounts of punishment and imprisonment, and then move on to identify some of the key sources of penal knowledge. The book is largely focused on prisons and punishment in the United Kingdom, but the next chapter in part two examines international comparative studies of penology and their implications for thinking about penal sanctions closer to home. The next three chapters provide an account of the history, aims, policy and organisational structures of penal systems in the United Kingdom, before moving on to consider some of the problems and controversies that are encountered in prison life and the current means of penal accountability. Part two concludes with a discussion of non-custodial forms of punishment and a review of three alternative visions of the future: penal expansionism; penal reductionism; and penal abolitionism. Many, if not all, of these issues will be discussed in your course, but you must ensure that you are clear regarding the focus and content of the module you are studying. This can only be achieved by attending lectures and seminars. Reading appropriate chapters in advance, however, may help you to understand your lectures and to prepare for your seminars. To help you in your studies, the book provides bullet points of key arguments and debates throughout. Alongside this, your course companion uses the following unique features to help you to develop insights into penological thought.

THINKING LIKE A PENOLOGIST: AN INTRODUCTION TO YOUR COURSE COMPANION 5

Part three offers you guidance with your studies. This should be read in conjunction with part two. If you work your way carefully through part three, by its end, you should be better equipped to profit from your lectures, benefit from your seminars, construct your essays efficiently, develop effective revision strategies and respond comprehensively to the pressures of exam situations and, finally, think clearly about the organisation and structure of your dissertation. In the five chapters in this part, you are presented with checklists and bullet points to focus your attention on key issues; worked examples to demonstrate the use of such features as structure, headings and continuity; and tips that provide practical advice in nutshell form. Part four concludes the book with a glossary that provides brief definitions of a number of key penological terms and a bibliography listing the sources cited in the book.

Fugitive thought: a brief introduction to penology We all have been punished and have probably perpetrated some form of punishment at some stage of our lives. Although the discipline of

6 PENOLOGY penology has been primarily concerned with punishments sanctioned and undertaken by the state, it is important to recognise that punishment does not begin there, but rather within wider society. Punishments can be physical or psychological, performed publicly or privately, and can be either informal or a formal and legal sanction. You may have experienced some form of sanction or punishment by a family member while as a child at home, or at school through informal interactions with friends or for breaking school rules. As an adult, such informal punishments may take place in relationships or in the workplace. You may feel that this form of punishment has served you well in your life, or you may have found it no use at all. From this experience, you may think that punishment is a ‘necessary evil’—that is essential for the raising of children or for the regulation of adult human life—or it may have led you to think that such sanctioning is counterproductive. Punishments are invoked when someone is believed to have done something wrong. This means that they are believed to have breached the rules, whether those rules are legal, social, organisational or moral. Wrongdoing and rule breaking are probably inevitable in human societies, and so the pertinent question becomes ‘how should we respond when wrongful acts and breaches of rules occur?’ Should we aim to include or exclude offenders, to help them, to control them, or to harm them? Alongside this, we must also recognise that the manner in which rules are defined and understood may vary over time and space. Rule breaking and doing wrong reflect the different interests, values and goals of those in positions of power, and of those who define the rules in the first instance. Consequently, some wrongdoing is illegal and defined as a ‘crime’, while other forms of harm are not. Further, whether a person is punished for a wrongdoing is not only a consequence of the act itself. It is just as important to think about who the offender is. You may often have heard the term ‘don’t do as I do, do as I say’: an adult or teacher (people in positions of power in a given social context) who breaches family or school rules may be much less likely to face sanctions than a child or student (the powerless) who does the same. The nature and extent of action that the government and its official servants take in response to human wrongdoing tells us a great deal about the kind of society in which we live. Many penologists and politicians have highlighted over the centuries that the way in which we deal with offenders is a major indication of the level of civilisation and commitment to human rights and civil liberties in our society. The study of punishment and penalties, then, is not only about those who are subjected to them, or even those who work in the criminal justice system,

THINKING LIKE A PENOLOGIST: AN INTRODUCTION TO YOUR COURSE COMPANION 7

but is something that goes to the heart of our culture. We may only be bystanders in the punishment business, but it is in our names— and apparently our interests—that the harms of punishment are inflicted. The study of punishment has a very long history. There are documents detailing penal philosophy in the times of the great Greek civilisation, and both Plato and Aristotle wrote on punishment. There is also evidence of penal theory in the Egyptian and Roman civilisations. You have probably heard the saying ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. This phrase is derived from the ancient Jewish tradition of lex talionis. Although it is still widely used today, its real meaning of restoring balance is often misinterpreted. The great social thinkers, sociologists and philosophers—from Kant and Hegel, to Durkheim and Foucault—have all written about punishment, with the latter writing also on imprisonment. But the discipline of penology is often seen as emerging in the eighteenth century, with the philosophical insights of Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham, alongside the penal reforms inspired by evangelical Christians such as John Howard and George Onesiphourus Paul. What all of this indicates is that the history of ‘fugitive thought’ is closely tied up with a number of different disciplines, and with the work of penal practitioners and reformers. You should be aware that this multidisciplinary approach and pragmatic application of knowledge continues to shape the discipline of penology today.

Penology attempts to understand the complex, difficult and emotive issues that are raised when we think about punishment.

8 PENOLOGY !

You may also have noticed that I have not mentioned ‘crime’ here. The relationship between ‘crime’ and punishment is very complex, and penologists have looked to other factors influencing punishments.

Thinking like a penologist The key to success in your course is to learn how to ‘think like a penologist’—that is to say, to learn how to speak academic language, using the terms and phrases that mark out ‘penologist speak’ from that of everyday talk on ‘crime’, punishment and imprisonment. This book will give you hints and tips about when and how to use this language, and on the ways of thinking about the world that come with this language. It is important that you use the appropriate terms and phrases— but there are no easy shortcuts here: you must be able to unpack terms

THINKING LIKE A PENOLOGIST: AN INTRODUCTION TO YOUR COURSE COMPANION 9

and use them. Academic language is a form of shorthand and, to get good marks, you must be able to demonstrate that you fully understand the words you are using, and their implications for the deployment of penalties in society. To think like a penologist it is important that you think critically about prisons and punishment. This does not mean that you simply criticise everyone and everything, but rather that you are able to develop analytical skills that help you to evaluate and judge the issues that you are studying. ‘Crime’ and punishment are popular debates, but discussions are often rooted in complete misunderstandings of key facts and issues. The kind of stories and debates that you hear generally, in pub talk or on a radio phone-in, are pragmatic, individualistic and authoritarian. You must allow yourself the opportunity to think beyond such penological illiteracy. You must be able to develop an analytical and critical framework when assessing the validity and appropriateness of current forms of punishment and imprisonment, and to engage with wider social theory, philosophy, social policy, history, psychology and, especially, sociology. Thinking like a penologist involves challenging taken-for-granted and populist assumptions. It involves taking on what appears, at first, to be quite alien ideas. One of the most remarkable arguments made by penologists is that we should rethink the relationship between ‘crime’ and punishment. You have probably grown up and lived your life with the belief that the existence of punishments is intimately tied to the problem of ‘crime’, and that the extent of ‘crime’ is the most important factor in determining the level of punishment. But some of the most important and influential penologists, such as Emile Durkheim, Georg Rusche and Michel Foucault, argue that ‘crime’ is relatively insignificant, and that the form and extent of punishments in society must be understood through its relationship with other social, economic and political factors. Thinking like a penologist means thinking outside the box.

Some penologists put the word ‘crime’ in inverted commas to indicate that the content and meanings of the term are contested. They may offer alternative words, such as ‘troubles’, ‘problematic behaviours’ or ‘social harms’ to describe rule breaking and wrongdoing.

Penology is a theoretical discipline and, when theorising about punishment and imprisonment, it is important that you are able to locate

10 PENOLOGY the issues and debates within the ‘big picture’. One of the best ways to do this is to develop what has been described as your ‘sociological or criminological imagination’ (Mills, 1959; Barton et al., 2006). This is a quality of mind, a particular way of approaching, thinking about or interpreting social problems and their possible implications and resolution. Unlike ‘pub talk’, you look to uncover wider social, political and economic factors that might influence who is punished and why. Central to penological thought are concerns around power. This entails analysis of the form and nature of wider power relations in society, and of the exercise of the power to punish. You must constantly be aware of ‘power’ when thinking about punishment: who has the power to define and label; who are the powerless; who are the powerful; and how these power differentials shape crime controls. To think like a penologist, you should attempt to understand punishments within their structural, historical and social contexts. You should try to form an understanding of the world in which individual choices, experiences and daily lives are located within a given historical moment and wider structural contexts, such as age, gender, sexuality, financial resources or perceived ‘race’. You should consider how the wrongdoing and rule breaking of people at the lower end of the social hierarchy may be perceived and treated differently to that of those at the top. You should also try to see things from different perspectives and points of view, including the world views of the prisoner and the powerless.

THINKING LIKE A PENOLOGIST: AN INTRODUCTION TO YOUR COURSE COMPANION 11

(Continued)

When thinking like a penologist you can develop a new vocabulary for understanding the lived experiences of those you are studying. Using your sociological imagination as Charles Wright Mills (1959) intended can help you to develop ways of understanding the social world that intimately connect individual meanings and experiences with wider collective or social realities. Moreover, it should help you to understand why many penologists believe that prisons must be placed within wider social and structural contexts, rather than considered in isolation. To ‘think like a penologist’, then, means to develop such an imagination when contemplating punishments.

p a rt tw o c or e a r e a s of th e c urric ulu m

14 PENOLOGY

ru n nin g th e m e s in p e n olo g y

No matter what area of penology you are writing about, it is probably not too difficult to predict that the subject in question will be marked out by similar ‘running themes’ that recur throughout the subject. Always try to mention these themes and to think about how they make an impact upon the topic at hand.

RUNNING THEMES IN PENOLOGY 15

Bear in mind that the running themes listed above are nearly always interrelated.

16 PENOLOGY

2.1 ju stific a tio n s of p u nis h m e nt

Running themes

Key penologists

JUSTIFICATIONS OF PUNISHMENT 17

The five rules of punishment Penologists have asked important philosophical questions about all forms of punishment, regulation and control. We are to consider the following three:

Let us start by thinking about the first question: ‘What is state punishment?’ Broadly speaking, a ‘punishment’ is an act that intentionally inflicts pain on another person. Punishment is about deliberately causing somebody else harm and suffering, perhaps in response to an illegal act. It also implies that somebody has the right or the legitimate

18 PENOLOGY power to create human suffering. The most influential definition of punishment has been provided by Professor Andrew Flew (1954), who argued that, for an act to be defined as a punishment, it must conform to five basic rules.

For a given penal sanction to be understood as a state punishment, it must arise through a person’s illegal wrongdoing, it must be painful to the offender and it must be imposed only by state officials who have been given the power to punish in that given society. Following this reasoning, any suffering that is meted out in response to a ‘crime’ by nonauthorised personnel, i.e. vigilantes, must be condemned as illegitimate. But the very idea of organised practices that are rooted in the deliberate infliction of human pain and suffering necessarily raises key moral and political questions of ‘legitimacy’. This leads us to our second question: ‘Are state punishments necessary and justifiable?’ Justifications of punishment can be divided into three main approaches: philosophies that look to justify punishment in terms of preventing future offending behaviour; philosophies that focus on responding to the actual offence; and philosophies that maintain that punishment can be neither morally nor politically justified.

Future crimes

JUSTIFICATIONS OF PUNISHMENT 19

(Continued) Past crimes

Beyond punishment

Punishing future crimes

R eform and rehabilitation The terms ‘reform’ and ‘rehabilitation’, although often used interchangeably, in fact mean very different things. Reform ultimately means the changing of the offender. The aim of reformative punishment is to alter the individual by attempting to re-educate, teach, train or instil a new morality. The transformation of the offender would have been necessary even if he or she had not committed the particular act for which he or she is currently incarcerated, because the offender’s immorality, irresponsibility or lack of respectability is rooted in either cultural deprivation or individual weakness. The offender is in need of moral education, in the form of work, religion, schooling or vocational training. Rehabilitation, by contrast, does not attempt to change the offender, but rather to restore the individual to that state in which he or she was before the crime was committed. It is assumed that the individual has, in some way, been changed through the ‘crime’ he or she has committed, or that the ‘crime’ occurred because of the offender’s mental, physical or moral degradation. This suggests that treatment is most important and that, just like medicine, if the problems could be correctly diagnosed, we would be able to cure the offender and, ultimately, society of problematic behaviour. This idea is linked to the medical model, and the importance of forensic psychology, psychiatry, and medical experts. Common pitfall Be careful, when an essay or exam question asks about ‘reform’, not to confuse the philosophical justification about individual change with ideas about changes in the system, such as improving prison environments, or the introduction of new laws and penal sanctions.

20 PENOLOGY In practice, rehabilitation and reform have been applied together. Perhaps most well known was the ‘treatment and training ideology’ that provided the orientating focus of the prison service in the United Kingdom in the mid-twentieth century. Underscoring both reform and rehabilitation are the beliefs that:

According to Philip Bean (1981), the key strengths to the rehabilitation argument are that:

But reform and rehabilitation have been heavily criticised.

JUSTIFICATIONS OF PUNISHMENT 21

Do prisons rehabilitate or dehabilitate offenders? After nearly two hundred years of the prison experiment in the United Kingdom, it seems that a sentence of imprisonment is more likely to increase, rather than to decrease, future offending.

Common pitfall Ensure that, when looking at a question on punishment, you are clear on whether you are being asked to evaluate the philosophical justifications or how effective they have been when used in prison. It is possible that the question will be asking you to assess both the philosophy and its practical application.

Individual and general deterrence The philosophical justifications concerning deterrence are rooted in utilitarianism, a moral and political philosophy that emphasises the importance of developing social policies that maximise the good and minimise the bad. Utilitarians believe that we are able to devise an equation between pain and pleasure. In relation to punishment, this relates specifically to the pains of punishment as a utility in reducing the pains inflicted upon victims. Utilitarians argue that we can work out a system of punishment that can discourage and deter offending behaviour. This means that the system must be certain and that ‘crimes’ must be punished. There are two central issues concerning deterrence: individual and general. Individual deterrence involves the punishments having a direct impact on the offender who has committed the offence. This is clearly

22 PENOLOGY a psychological approach. General deterrence is applied to the whole community, i.e. as a method of social control.

Individual deterrence For Bean (1981), individual deterrence is directly linked to the following.

G eneral deterrence General deterrence involves social control and central to this is the ‘social fear calculus’. It works in a similar way to the individual fear calculus, but the individual is not subjected to the pain him or herself; rather, the individual sees the pain of others and is deterred from the activity that led to it, because he or she does not want to be subjected to such suffering. It relates to wider social relations and, although directed against an individual, is intended to have implications beyond the person who is actually punished.

D eterring who? The limitations of deterrence There are a number of problems with the deterrent approach, as follows.

JUSTIFICATIONS OF PUNISHMENT 23

A correlation is when two phenomena occur at the same time, but are not necessarily linked. For example, a recorded increase in the consumption of carrot juice may coincide with a decline in recorded ‘crime’. Both have happened at the same time, but are not linked with the other. The discovery of a causal relationship is the golden fleece of penology. A causal relationship is much more difficult to prove and arises only when one phenomenon has a direct relationship with another—in short, when there is a cause and effect.

24 PENOLOGY Prevention, protection and incapacitation ‘Incapacitation’ means the reduction of the capacity of the offender to commit crimes in order to protect the public. Right-wing extremists have called for the incapacitation of all criminals and there are many who consider arguments around selective incapacitation plausible. This justification has been attractive because it:

The limitations of incapacitation

JUSTIFICATIONS OF PUNISHMENT 25

Despite the obvious limitations of positivism and prediction, there have been many studies, following in the tradition of West and Farrington (1973), that have been published by the government in recent years. You will be able to access these through the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice.

Punishing past crimes

R etribution, denunciation and just deserts Talk of retribution is often linked with talk of ‘justice’. The argument is that we get what we deserve. Retribution, in its various forms, is rooted in the principle that, if we harm another human being, we ourselves deserve to be harmed. The retributive approach to punishment has the advantage of focusing on an offender’s guilt and thus equating the punishment to a wrong that has been done. It also argues for proportionality, in that lesser crimes should be punished in a lesser way and greater crimes, more harshly. Retributive punishments are a public statement that the behaviour punished is wrong and should not be engaged in. It shows that society disapproves of such behaviours. By punishing past crimes, we are demonstrating that the behaviour is wrong by denouncing them. In recent times, retribution has been popularised through the arguments of ‘just deserts’. This perspective has been championed in the work of Andrew von Hirsch (1976). In Doing Justice, von Hirsch argued that punishment should be commensurate to the seriousness of the offence. Just deserts, however, should not be seen as an all-encompassing justification for punishment; rather it is linked to sentencing and is called a ‘distributive justification’. This means that it is involved in justifying the distribution or the meeting out of punishments. The difficulty that the idea of just deserts has encountered has centred on the measuring of the seriousness of a ‘crime’ and whether we should focus on the offender’s intentions or the consequences of his or her wrongdoing.

Two wrongs? A critique of retribution

26 PENOLOGY

Common pitfall Ensure that you fully explore the meaning of all of the concepts that you use. Many terms have different meanings at different times to different people. Two obvious examples are ‘justice’ and ‘lex talionis’.

Ultimately, then, we are left with a number of serious problems and contradictions—and these concerns lead us to our third question: ‘Do we need to punish at all?’

Thinking beyond punishment Some penologists have challenged the legitimacy of punishment, and have looked beyond strategies of penalisation as means of responding to personal troubles, harms, social problems and illegalities. Abolitionist

JUSTIFICATIONS OF PUNISHMENT 27

thinker Willem de Haan (1990) argues that we should think beyond punishment and offers the concept of ‘redress’ in its place. This is a concept with ancient origins and involves the consideration of historical and anthropological forms of dispute settlement and conflict resolution. Redress means: to put right or in good order again, to remedy or remove trouble of any kind, to set right, to repair, rectify something suffered or complained of like a wrong to correct, amend, reform or do away with a bad or faulty state of things, to repair an action or misdeed or offence, to save or deliver from misery, to restore or bring back a person to a proper state, to happiness or prosperity, to the right course. (Concise Oxford Dictionary, cited in de Haan, 1990, p. 158)

Similar principles are implied in the other ‘R’s of community responses: reparation; restitution; repayment; reconciliation; and reintegration. Stan Cohen (1985) reminds us that these are visions of inclusionary, rather than exclusionary, social control that are rooted in social integration and community. But informal means of control can lead to a further extension of state powers, and to new modes of discipline, surveillance and regulation. They can blur boundaries and may bring into the criminal justice system more petty offenders. They may also intensify state controls that are directed at serious offenders.

Consider the moral and political arguments for and against “incapacitation. ”

Are the arguments for restorative justice plausible in a society with “‘race’, class and gender structural fault lines? ”

28 PENOLOGY

Taking

Te x t b o o k g u i d e

it F U R T H E R

THEORISING ABOUT PRISONS AND PUNISHMENT 29

2.2 th e orisin g a b o ut pris o n s a n d p u nis h m e nt

Running themes

Key penologists

30 PENOLOGY

Progress, modernity and civilisation Theories of punishment and prisons are often linked with ideas of ‘civilisation’, ‘morality’ and ‘social progress’. In these theories, punishment is seen as evolutionary and is often tied to the notion of ‘modernity’.

Modernity is a period in human history that was shaped by the privileging of rationality and reason above emotions. It is tied to the rise of the Enlightenment in the seventeenth century, which privileged secular human knowledge, and scientific, neutral and objective analysis, above religion and folklore.

The rise of modernity is considered by penologists to have had a defining influence on the development of punishment.

THEORISING ABOUT PRISONS AND PUNISHMENT 31

Administrative penology Administrative penology is the official version of prison life. Changes in punishments since the eighteenth century are perceived to have been progressive and underscored by humanitarian reforms. These reforms are considered to have been motivated by benevolence, altruism and efforts to make the penal system more efficient through the application of scientific principles.

In this ‘quintessentially optimistic’ world view, the prison is perceived as a sign of progress in both penal administration and the sensibilities of the nation. The emergence of administrative knowledge and practices provided the platform for the birth of the discipline of penology itself.

Administrative penologies provide excellent descriptions and are often well researched. Good examples are Sydney and Beatrice Webb (1922) English Prisons Under Local Government and Sir Leon Radzinowicz and Roger Hood (1986) History of the Criminal Law (Volume 5). You should read such accounts, but administrative penologists accept implicitly the claims of those they are investigating.

E mile Durkheim Durkheim believed that society is a moral entity with a reality all of its own, and argued that common beliefs and shared moral sentiments shape what he called the ‘conscience collective’. It was, for Durkheim, immersion into the moral boundaries of the conscience collective that guides interactions and determines human behaviour. Durkheim was also interested in how the social system is protected from those who challenge these wider shared beliefs and values. Durkheim believed that some acts that are against the law (‘crimes’) and other behaviours that go against the norms of a society (‘deviance’) can be signs of progress and a healthy society. Durkheim also argued, however, that there are other ‘crimes’ that should be denounced, condemned and punished. These social acts are such an outrage to humanity that they can inflict damage to the conscience collective. The whole of society is the victim of these ‘crimes’. All ‘healthy’ members of society are repulsed and offended by ‘crime’. For Durkheim, ‘crimes’ highlighted the fragility, insecurities and weakness of society. The barbarity of the response shows how deeply the

32 PENOLOGY moral sensibilities are offended. The weaker the moral order and social integration, the stronger the threat to the social order, and, consequently, the stronger and more extreme the punishment invoked. Durkheim argued that punishment sends a moral message denouncing heinous behaviour, and reinforces the wider constructions of morality and social cohesion. He argued that, while punishments cannot create consensus, they can express condemnation, and reinforce the morality and consensus that already exists.

Durkheim argued that the form of punishment is linked to the progress that society has made. For Durkheim, primitive societies were characterised by repressive laws. They constituted a small number of individuals for whom social solidarity was based on similarity and who had an extremely punitive psychological disposition. Punishments were extremely severe and offenders were executed in the most awful ways imaginable: stoned; crucified; hanged; hung, drawn and quartered, with parts of their bodies sent throughout the kingdom; hurled from cliffs; crushed beneath the feet of animals. In contrast, advanced societies are heterogeneous, featuring a specialisation of tasks and recognition of mutual interdependence. In a more secure society, punishments become less severe and restitutive laws replace those that are repressive.

For Durkheim, a strong, morally legitimate social order requires very little punishment to reinforce social solidarity.

Hudson (2003) points out that there are a number of criticisms that can be made of Durkheim’s thesis. Durkheim is vague about the historical process, in that he does not identify the point at which primitive societies change into advanced societies. Additionally, he provides no intermediary society that features elements of both of these forms of punishment. Durkheim does not fully engage with power and inequality, and the manner in which consent is organised is not explained. Punishments in a ‘law and order society’ are used to create consensus, rather than to reinforce existing morality, and the conception of hegemony may provide a more plausible explanation. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that we have seen a shift from restitution to repressive forms of punishment in advanced capitalist societies.

THEORISING ABOUT PRISONS AND PUNISHMENT 33

Norbert Elias In his magnum opus, The Civilising Process, first published in 1939, Norbert Elias outlines how Western sensibilities have changed since medieval times. Through close readings of etiquette manuals, fictional works, paintings and various other documents of instruction or description, Elias charts, in fascinating detail, changes in table manners, attitudes towards bodily functions, behaviour in the bedroom, habits of washing and cleanliness, and the proper way of addressing strangers. For Elias, the civilising process involves a tightening of the controls that are imposed by society upon individuals and an increased level of psychological inhibition. Elias argues that humans gradually internalise fears, anxieties and inhibitions that are imposed upon them by their parents and their social environment, developing a superego that inhibits the expression of instinctual drives in accordance with the demands of cultural life. This transformation of the human psyche in the civilising process implies that the more civilised a society, the more its inhabitants are repressed.

David Garland (1990) has provided one of the most influential accounts of how the work of Elias can be applied to penology. Garland argues that, today, a whole range of possible punishments—tortures; maimings; stonings; public whippings—are simply ruled out as unthinkable because they strike us as impossibly cruel and barbaric. In keeping with the demands of a civilised society, the experience of pain is today ushered behind the prison walls. Similarly following Elias, Dutch penologist Pieter Spierenburg (1984) concentrates on the changing sensibilities that, in a crucial sense, mediated the link between state development and penal history, while English historian VAC Gattrell (1994) makes similar arguments in relation to the end of public executions in England and Wales. Many critics have questioned whether there really has been any progress around penal sensibilities, while other critics have taken exception to the argument that civilisation and penal reforms can only be achieved through the psychical repression of a naturally evil human nature.

Elias is vulnerable to criticism in relation to his pessimistic vision of the social order and his notion that perceived moral acts are merely examples of psychological conditioning.

34 PENOLOGY Zygmunt B auman In one of the most acclaimed books of recent times, Modernity and the Holocaust (1989), Bauman argues that the systematic extermination of 20 million people in the Nazi Holocaust was not an aberration, but rather a problem that is central to the functioning of modern civilisations. Bauman points out that modernity facilitates a ‘gardening state’ with big visions aimed at the creation of a new and better society. Alongside great progress, modernity can lead to scientifically and rationally conceived genocide—i.e. genocide with the purpose of creating a better and more civilised society.

For Bauman, the Holocaust would not have been possible without a civilised, rational, bureaucratic modern society weakening the moral basis of human interactions.

Bauman argues that, in this instance, obedience to bureaucratic orders and the dehumanisation of ‘the other’ neutralised any sense of responsibility, leading to the social production of moral indifference. Most ‘normal’ bureaucrats involved in the Nazi killing machine were doing administrative duties as part of a rationally and bureaucratically ordered chain. They did not see the end results and relationships were characterised by distance. This distance was both physical, through the division of labour, and psychological, through the depersonalising and devaluing of certain categories of human being. The only escape, for Bauman, is to prioritise our moral and unreciprocated responsibilities for others, and to create a sense of psychic proximity with all fellow humans. The implications for penology of this analysis are immense. The rational, the bureaucratic and the managerial are still privileged above the ethical, and one of the main groups of people most easily defined as ‘vermin’ or ‘weeds’ are those that we imprison. Nils Christie (2000) has most successfully made this connection. The work of Bauman has been criticised, however, because it is difficult to relate his analysis to other, less technocratic, genocides in the twentieth century, and on the basis that his challenge to modern progress may be politically conservative, because it denies the possibility of a better, all-inclusionary alternative. Further, his analysis critiques modernity itself and so is inconsistent with modernist theorists. Common pitfall When considering the work of Bauman, Elias and Durkheim, ensure that you are aware of their very different views on human nature.

THEORISING ABOUT PRISONS AND PUNISHMENT 35

Social divisions and the distribution of punishments Penologists have also looked at the way in which punishments have been unequally distributed in modern societies among the social divisions of class, ‘race’ and gender. Problematising the link between ‘crime’ and the continued existence of the prison, penologists have attempted to uncover the real functions of imprisonment through analysis of political economy, power, patriarchies and the demands of the labour market. These theorists reflect contemporary political traditions such as liberalism, Marxism and feminism.

Liberalism Liberalism takes the humanitarian visions of penal reformers at face value, but recognises that they had disastrous consequences. This approach is described by Stanley Cohen (1985) as the ‘we blew it thesis’. In a prime example of this tradition, US penologist David J Rothman’s The Discovery of the Asylum (1971) identified the importance of religion, humanitarianism and benevolence in the development of the asylum in the USA. Rothman argued that the reformers believed that people could be changed through incarceration, yet, in practice, confinement in total institutions was creating greater harm to, rather than helping, inmates.

In essence, the liberal penological approach provides us with a pessimistic warning from history that benevolence itself should not be trusted.

Critics have claimed that liberalism has failed to learn from past mistakes, holding firm to the belief that penal reforms can work, if only the great humanitarian principles could be correctly implemented on the ground.

Marxism Traditional Marxists have looked at the political economy of punishment. The most important contribution to Marxist penology is Georg Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer’s Punishment and Social Structure (2003), originally published in 1939. The book is firmly located within a material economic framework and aimed to uncover ‘why certain methods of

36 PENOLOGY punishment are adopted or rejected in a given social situation?’ (p. 3). Rusche and Kirchheimer argued that punishment is an independent social phenomenon that has a complex relationship with ‘crime’.

For Marxist penologists, punishments are historically specific and correspond to the given mode of economic production. In conjunction with non-penal institutions of the state, punishments perform a hidden role in the regulation of poverty. Shifts in the organisation of the economy, then, have implications for the form that punishments will take (Rusche, 1933).

Rusche and Kirchheimer identified three historical epochs.

Rusche and Kirchheimer also identified three functions of the prison in the industrialised historical epoch.

THEORISING ABOUT PRISONS AND PUNISHMENT 37

A number of criticisms have been raised against the thesis of Rusche and Kirchheimer. It is often considered to be historically unreliable, because not all capitalist economies developed in the same way. Prisons are very expensive and are not a rational response to labour market economic demands. They ignore ideological constructions of imprisonment and are also accused of being gender-blind, because there is no consideration of the different forms that the social control, regulation and punishment of women can take.

Anti-slavery J Thorsten Sellin’s Slavery and the Penal System (1976) follows in the tradition of Rusche and Kirchheimer (1939) and German legal theorist Gustav Radbruch, in his claim that current legal punishments are derived from slavery.

Both imprisonment and slavery entail the loss of citizenship, dehumanisation and ‘othering’, the deprivation of liberty and being forced to undertake manual labour.

Sellin argues that legal punishments were originally the private domestic punishments of slaves, but that, over the centuries, they have been made applicable to all offenders. He explains that, in ancient civilisations such as the Roman Empire, slavery was legitimated and freemen were exempt from punishments. Hard labour in the imperial metal and salt mines (‘ad metalla’) or in the chain gangs repairing roads, cleaning sewers and public baths (‘opus publicum’) became the primary punishment of the poor. The incorporation of slave punishments into state punishments was also evident in the Middle Ages in Europe. Slavery was firmly established among the Germanic peoples and manual labour was considered beneath the dignity of freemen. Offences by freemen against persons of property were settled by payment of financial indemnities, often without official intervention. But as property relations developed, the dehumanising labour-orientated slave punishments were thought to be appropriate to impoverished freemen unable to purchase immunity.

38 PENOLOGY

Sellin highlights how only the nobles, the titled and the rich retained their exemptions from physical punishments. Socio-economic and political changes gradually placed a greater premium on labour, and public authorities started to punish offenders through public work for the profit of the state.

Opus publicum (forced public labour) was revived, and was performed both indoors and outdoors in irons. Sellin argues that, by the late sixteenth century, penal slavery was deeply embedded in legal punishments across Europe and its colonies, such as the USA. He places a premium on highlighting how imprisonment is connected to a wider, dehumanised slave condition. Sellin has been criticised on similar grounds to the Marxist penologists and, specifically, on the basis that his analysis of penal servitude is too broad and geographically disparate.

N eo-Marxism Steven Box, in his book Recession, Crime and Punishment (1987) and in a number of articles co-written with Chris Hale in the early 1980s, provides one of the most impressive neo-Marxist analyses of imprisonment. Box and Hale (1982) challenge the orthodox account of the relationship between unemployment, ‘crime’ and imprisonment. They argue that official crime rates are not necessarily influenced by unemployment and economic hardship, but that the belief that unemployment and ‘crime’ are intimately connected has significant consequences for who is imprisoned.

‘Neo’ means ‘new’, so neo-Marxism simply means ‘New Marxism’. For an excellent example of neo-Marxist criminology, see Hall et al. (1978).

For Box and Hale, in times of recession, the sentence of imprisonment is ‘an ideologically motivated response to the perceived threat of crime posed by the swelling population of economically marginalised persons’ (p. 363). Judges believe that unemployment will lead to an increase in ‘crime’ among certain sub-populations of the relative surplus population and consider it to be important to punish the ‘sub-proletariat’ to send a deterrent message to society. Looking at ideology can help to explain why prison is used when it is clearly not the most rational or costeffective solution to social problems.

THEORISING ABOUT PRISONS AND PUNISHMENT 39

Neo-Marxist approaches are critiqued for being functionalist.

Modernist feminism Penology has been criticised for being written by men, for men and about men. Male knowledge has been presented as ‘the’ knowledge.

Until the 1980s, penological studies largely ignored how the punishment of women is different from that of men. In recent years, feminist penologists have highlighted this theoretical blind spot, detailing the ways in which women are regulated differently from men through informal means of social control and how women experience state punishments very differently from men.

Francis Heidensohn (1985) outlined how women offenders are doubly deviant, having broken both legal and gender rules of conduct. Their punishment might be determined by how well they are able to conform to gender expectations and middle-class respectability. Pat Carlen (1983) interviewed women prisoners at Scotland’s Cornton Vale prison and outlined how the pains of imprisonment for women were harsher than those of men. This was due to a number of reasons:

Many modernist feminists have argued for the need for a ‘woman-wise’ penology.

Michel Foucault Michael Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977) is one of the most influential books in penology in the last thirty years. Taking as his backcloth the change from capital punishment to the timetabled regimes of the penitentiaries, Foucault rejected the liberal argument that the prison was a form of humanitarian progress, claiming instead that prisons developed ‘not to punish less; [but] to punish better, to insert the power to punish more deeply into the social body’ (p. 82).

40 PENOLOGY Although he did not reject the ‘top-down’ Marxist approach of penologists such as Rusche and Kirchheimer, Foucault used a different analytical framework and understanding of how power operates ‘bottom up’. He was interested in how disciplinary power impacted on the human soul (the psyche) at the micro level.

For Foucault, power is productive, dispersed throughout society and intimately related to the construction of knowledge. Foucault wished to understand how the ‘power/ knowledge’ axis could be deployed to observe and render human beings obedient.

Hunt and Wickham (1994) explain how, for Foucault, disciplinary power operated on three levels, as follows.

The prison was not the only means through which disciplinary power operated—other places included the school, the family and the workplace—but it was at the pinnacle of a ‘carceral’ continuum.

To justify wider disciplinary controls, Foucault argues, the prison deliberately invents delinquents. In this sense, a state of permanent conflict exists to meet the needs of a crime control industry and to legitimate wider disciplinary controls. Further, certain illegalities are isolated and made manageable, while some offenders can be retrained and turned into disciplined, docile and productive human beings.

Foucault has been criticised for overgeneralising disciplinary punishments used against juveniles to those used against adults and for providing only a partial analysis of punishments that requires synthesis with one, or more, of the earlier modernist ‘total theories’. He has also been criticised on the bases that, like the Marxists, his analysis is functionalist and masculinist, and that his conception of power is simply a restatement of the basic sociological concept of socialisation.

THEORISING ABOUT PRISONS AND PUNISHMENT 41

In recent years, some penologists have looked to develop the later writings of Foucault on penal governance. These are often referred to as governmentality theorists, of which tradition Malcolm Feeley and Jonathon Simon (1994) are good examples.

What has been the contribution of feminist studies to our “understanding of the role of imprisonment? ”

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42 PENOLOGY Te x t b o o k g u i d e

2.3 s o urc e s of p e n a l k n owl e d g e

Running themes

SOURCES OF PENAL KNOWLEDGE

Telling secrets Prisons are closed, secretive worlds in which it is difficult to uncover the truth. As a student of penology, you need to understand how such state organisations work, what problems they encounter and whether they undertake their functions correctly. Yet you may find that, when researching state institutions, you uncover contradictory evidence, competing or even unsubstantiated knowledge claims, or are told that little or no data is available. This lack of ‘visibility’ presents major obstacles. Uncovering the truth about prison life requires you to ask the right questions and access the most relevant and contemporary sources. In this chapter, we look at the strengths and weaknesses of the main forms of penal knowledge that are available to help you in your task.

You should try to use all of the sources detailed in this chapter, especially if you are undertaking a penology dissertation.

Lies, damn lies and official prison statistics The government regularly produces detailed official statistics on prisons and other forms of punishment in society. The Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and the Prison Service all publish official data. Official prison statistics are an important source of information, but they are not designed, compiled or written in the interests of the general public; rather, they are written as records of the activities, budgets and workloads of state agencies. Official prison statistics provide data on:

44 PENOLOGY Acts known by prisoners [and perhaps some staff]

Acts defined as a problem

Acts reported or detected by prison authorities

Act taken seriously by prison authorities

Act officially recorded by prison authorities

There are a number of reasons why using official prison data is important. Official data:

SOURCES OF PENAL KNOWLEDGE

Common pitfall Over-reliance on official sources may lead to work that is uncritical. Statistics can be easily manipulated, and you must always look to alternative accounts to assess the relevance and accuracy of any statistics.

Official prison statistics are not, then, objective and impartial accounts, but ‘social constructions’ of reality, reflecting the interests, goals and objectives of the gatekeepers of state institutions. They are a very useful source of knowledge, but are, at best, only partial accounts of prison life. There are many reasons why official data is limited. First, there are problems that are methodological (i.e. relating to how data is produced) and epistemological (i.e. relating to the limitations of quantitative data). Other concerns arise in terms of accuracy and the differences between reported data, recorded data, and what acts and events really occurred. Matthews (1999) informs us that such difficulties include:

Although academic penologists heavily criticise official statistics, very few do not use them at all.

Official reports and inquiries Official reports and inquiries are often written by respected members of the establishment, such as senior police officers, members of the judiciary or senior officers in the armed services. Recent examples of official inquiries include:

46 PENOLOGY Checklist of facts to ascertain when looking at an official inquiry ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Official reports are normally presented as open and ‘entirely independent of government’ (Keith, 2006, p. 9), apparently providing a thorough, objective, comprehensive and impartial account of events. But official reports represent and promote a particular world view. This ‘view from above’ influences the definitions and scope of the problem investigated, and the possible means of its resolution. As a result, certain ways of approaching social problems are presented as legitimate, while others are de-legitimated and marginalised as ‘irrational’.

Some penologists have argued that the aim of official reports and other inquiries is simply to allay fears of a prison crisis by representing the problems they are investigating as temporary or relatively insignificant. The primary objective, it is argued, is to re-establish the credibility of the government. For such critics, official reports are not necessarily intended to discover the truth, but rather to re-legitimate the state and its agents.

The media: more bad news? The term ‘media’ refers to mass communication systems with large audiences, such as the Internet, radio, television, film and newspapers. There are often very interesting programmes, documentaries or debates about punishment on television or on the radio and many newspapers, such as The Guardian or The Independent, have dedicated prison correspondents who provide detailed discussions of prison life. To some extent, we are reliant on the media for keeping us informed of events that happen beyond the scope of the informal mechanisms that grant us access to knowledge or of own personal experiences.

SOURCES OF PENAL KNOWLEDGE

The media are also an important source of penal knowledge because they:

Common pitfall Remember that the news is competitive and commercial, with the main intention of making money. The tension between providing information and the need to make stories entertaining can lead to attention being diverted away from certain serious issues to more superficial events or sensationalist takes on stories.

Although the media is fractured, with each different media group in direct competition the others, it is clear that certain stories and interpretations centred on ‘crime’ and punishment become dominant, and play a key role in the production and reproduction of current ways of thinking about social problems. In this sense, the media both reflect and perform a key role in shaping the construction of penal realities. In short, media stories are socially constructed around certain identifiable newsworthy criteria. Prison stories are patterned and must be immediate, dramatic and simple and, most of all, there must be a means of access to knowledge. The relationship between the media and prison authorities is institutionalised and access to official sources becomes structured, shaping, in effect, the remits of stories and the level of media critique.

The media sets the agenda, prioritises contrasting accounts, selects the narrator of events, and privileges certain voices and forms of interpretation. Often, the accounts of prisoners are seen as neither credible nor reliable, and so it is penal authorities that exclusively shape the agenda, leading to the reinforcement of dominant values and common-sense assumptions on prison life.

This dominant world view is sometimes referred to by penologists as hegemony or the hegemonic vision.

48 PENOLOGY A certain story may be reconstructed or repackaged into a given media formula that, although not quite fiction, is hardly a true reflection of events. Finally, the media do not provide context to their stories; rather, they present a specific narrative that underscores penal stories that isolate prisoner actions or protest. This narrative leads to constructions of prisoner resistance and dissent as illogical, pointing to the costs or damage caused, rather than as a rational response to a dehumanising lived reality.

Compare and contrast stories on prisons in different newspapers and written by different journalists. Look for both the similarities and also the differences between the representations of a single prison story.

Penal pressure groups and the unions: acceptable penal critics? Penal pressure groups provide an alternative to government agencies as a source of knowledge and expertise. There are four main groupings:

The liberal penal lobby Although by no means hom*ogenous, the liberal penal lobby have traditionally had the ‘ear of the government’. Liberal reformers often have good relations with government officials, politicians and civil servants, but these personal connections have sometimes diluted their ability to be critical. The liberal penal lobby provides the core of the credible and acceptable humanitarian voice, selectively critiquing or supporting the Prison Service. There are three main liberal pressure groups.

SOURCES OF PENAL KNOWLEDGE

The conservative penal lobby The conservative penal lobby is not as established as its liberal counterpart, although, in recent times, it has arguably been more influential on penal policy. Right-wing think tanks, such as the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute for Economic Affairs and Civitas, have published politically significant work on prison privatisation, the aims and justifications of imprisonment, and the relationship between ‘crime’ and imprisonment rates.

50 PENOLOGY The radical penal lobby Much of the penal knowledge with which we are presented reflects the interests of the powerful. There are very few alternative sources of knowledge that are not, in some way or other, connected with, or reliant upon, those who promulgate the ‘view from above’. The radical penal lobby provides an alternative voice and, although relatively few in number and often starved of resources, radical pressure groups continue to provide an independent analysis of government penal policies, practices and organisations.

Prisons are failed institutions that do not work. They are places of pain and social control and are brutal, abusive and damaging to everyone who is incarcerated in them. Prisons are fundamentally flawed and all attempts to reform them have failed. We are committed to their abolition through: Exposing the reality of imprisonment today; Stopping the building of new prisons and the expansion of existing prisons; Highlighting the fact that prisons not only fail prisoners but also have a negative impact on families and friends, victims and survivors and the whole community; Campaigning to close existing prisons; Opposing the criminalisation of young people, working class and minority ethnic communities; Promoting radical alternatives to prison that focus on social and community welfare rather than punishment. (www.alternatives2prison.ik.com)

SOURCES OF PENAL KNOWLEDGE

Penal pressure groups should be an indispensable source of your information. They generally provide up-to-date commentaries on government policy. Many penal pressure groups have also published books or have information on current penal controversies. You are strongly advised, whatever level or focus of your study, to look regularly at their websites and at their publications (such as the Howard Journal).

The staff unions Prison officers and governors also have specific pressure groups that promote their interests and lobby government. These are organised as trade unions.

Views from below: novels, biographies and films Penologists who focus upon the ‘view from below’ privilege the knowledge of the powerless, and how they interpret and define their experiences. In this sense, the view from below can provide:

52 PENOLOGY

There are a number of fictional accounts that help us to understand the experiences of prisoners. Two of the most influential are by famous Russian novelists. Theodore Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead (1860) and Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1963) provide highly descriptive and moving accounts of the pains of confinement. Both of these books are partially based on the authors’ own experience of penal servitude. Many other ex-prisoners have written about their experiences: Jimmy Boyle’s A Sense of Freedom (1977), Mark Leech’s A Product of the System (1992) and Ruth Wyner’s From the Inside (2003) are good examples. There are also many films that have looked to uncover the prisoners’ world view. Some of the best of this genre are: Scum (1979); Brubaker (1980); Ghosts of the Civil Dead (1988); The Shawshank Redemption (1994); Carandiru (2003).

Although it is quicker and easier to watch a film, reading a novel or autobiography is a much more enriching experience. Indeed, such books may be some of the best and most interesting titles that you will read on your degree programme.

The academy: appreciative or critical research values The final important source of penal knowledge is that of academics—but what are very important to consider when turning to this source are the research values of the penologist and the questions that are asked. There are two broad approaches to undertaking penological research: appreciative inquiry and critical inquiry. Alison Liebling (2004) is the leading proponent of AI. She claims that AI provides a faithful or truthful account of the respondent’s positive achievements, survival strategies and success stories, alongside his or her negative experiences. Because the approach is future-orientated, rather than focused only on the present or the past, outcomes and methodology are intimately tied.

SOURCES OF PENAL KNOWLEDGE

Questioning is appreciative in that, as a mode of inquiry, it asks that a respondent dwells on the best as well as the worst aspects of his or her prison experience. Interview questions focus on ‘prison values’ and are very specific. Respondents are asked to provide evidence of answers by way of an example, illustration or story drawn from his or her actual experiences. AI claims to provide a more sensitive, nuanced and instructive picture of the prison, and thus a more valuable approach than that of the traditional problem-orientated studies. A number of criticisms have been made against AI:

By contrast, critical inquiry is independent and asks difficult questions that look to uncover the truth, in a way that potentially challenges the interests of the powerful. Prison research should always aim to uncover real life, whatever this may look like. As Charles Wright Mills (1959) argues: Any style of empiricism involves a metaphysical choice—a choice as to what is most real … One tries to get it straight, to make an adequate statement—if it’s gloomy, too bad; if it leads to hope, fine. (pp. 67, 78)

As a metaphysical choice, it seems more appropriate to allow the respondents to detail their stories, whether positive or negative, so that their construction of events and reality can be outlined and critically interrogated. In critical inquiry, there is no great aim to change the future prison through the research process, but rather the more modest aim of simply getting to the ‘truth’. Such independent findings might not necessarily be good, or positive, but at least they are an account of actual experiences and illustrate their interpretive framework. Always try to uncover the theoretical and research priorities of the authors of a given study. This will help you to understand the kind of questions they have asked and also to contextualise their findings.

54 PENOLOGY

“Is there a crisis of penal visibility?”

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nvariablly what the prisoner says is not reliable … There is no reason to suppose that prisoners always tell the truth

much of what would have been recommended is now in place many of the systematic shortcomings this report has laid bare have been eliminated

COMPARATIVE PENOLOGIES

Te x t b o o k g u i d e

2.4 c o m p a r a tiv e p e n olo gi e s

Running themes

56 PENOLOGY Table 2.1

C ountry Australia Bra zil C had C hina C olombia C uba Finland France G ermany India Italy Japan N etherlands N ew Z e aland Norway Russia South Africa Sweden USA Vene zuela

Prison populations in 20 countries Prison population total (No. in penal institutions, incl. pre-trial detaine es)

N ational population

Prison population (per 100,000 national population)

25,353 361,402 3,416 1,548,498 62,216 55,000 3,954 52,009 78,581 332,112 61,721 79,055 21,013 7,620 3,048 869,814 157,402 7,450 2,186,230 19,853

20.2m 189.2m 9.7m 1,308.7m 46.3m 11.3m 5.26m 61.16m 82.5m 1,092.3m 59.32m 128.2m 16.38m 4.1m 4.62m 142.3m 47.04m 9.06m 296.4m 26.9m

126 191 35 118* 134 487 75 85 95 30 104 62 128 186 66 611 335 82 738 74

*S entenced prisoners only

Investigating prison populations: international and comparative studies A number of non-government organisations (NGOs) investigate prison conditions and the prisoners’ experiences of imprisonment around the world. These include Amnesty International, Penal Reform International and Human Rights Watch. The reports of NGOs are aimed at trying to highlight torture and appalling prison conditions as a means of shaming a given government or of raising consciousness among other nations and their governments.

Common pitfall Remember that, although NGO reports have been very effective in achieving many of their aims, they are largely descriptive rather than analytical. Students are not their intended audience. For essays, always complement the information from such organisations with academic work.

COMPARATIVE PENOLOGIES

There is also great interest in comparing the numbers of people sent to prison. Roy Walmsley (2006) gives details of prison population rates per 100,000 of the national population in 214 countries. In October 2006, there were more than 9.25 million people held in penal institutions throughout the world. Almost half were held in the USA (2.19 million), China (1.55 million plus pretrial detainees and those in ‘administrative detention’), or Russia (0.87 million). Today, the USA has the world’s highest prison population rate at 738 per 100,000 of the general population (see Table 2.1). Statistical comparative studies are limited in terms of their measurement and compilation. Specifically, there are concerns that:

Common pitfall Comparative data shares the limitations of other forms of official statistics and should be used guardedly.

The importance of comparative analysis The study of comparative penal systems is very important. Cavadino and Dignan (2006) remind us that it helps us to avoid reductionist, deterministic and ethnocentric social analysis. It allows us to understand the similarities, differences and broad trends in the way in which imprisonment has been deployed historically around the globe. It can also help us to understand why changes occur in our country, both through examining the policies of similar countries and through analysing the influence that other penal initiatives have had on our own host country. This is particularly useful when thinking about the growth in prison populations and the decline of the welfare state in many Western countries. Comparative analysis can also be used to examine the complex (if not relatively insignificant) relationship between ‘crime’ and punishment, the correlations between official crime and

58 PENOLOGY prison rates, and similarities and differences in the social backgrounds of prisoners and the offences they have committed. Comparative analysis can either demonstrate the validity of a given theory or illustrate its parochial nature and even its inaccuracy. Penologists have employed comparative analysis to investigate:

When reading a comparative study, ensure that you are aware of what the analysis is trying to achieve. Look at the questions it is asking and at which countries are involved.

The analytical framework of comparative analysis Comparative analysis has a number of strands. It is important to remember that these should be adopted for the study of any penal system, including that of England and Wales. Comparative penological analysis provides rich and detailed descriptions of a given nation, and is able to draw out the main configurations that shape the form, nature and extent of punishment in that country at any given moment in time. In so doing, it often aims to:

COMPARATIVE PENOLOGIES

Comparative analysis entails consideration of most of the following factors.

Common pitfall This list of criteria is useful for thinking about prisons and punishment even when exclusively looking at England and Wales. This is sometimes referred to as penality.

Some very good examples of comparative penologies that adopt a number of these criteria include Ruggiero et al.’s Western European Penal Systems: A Critical Anatomy (1996) and Cavadino and Dignan’s Penal Systems: A Comparative Approach (2006).

Case studies Weiss and South (1998, p. 2) argue that there have been five great developments shaping imprisonment in recent times.

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To this list, we might add the following two major developments of the last ten years.

Australia Australia is a federal state and a former colony of the United Kingdom. It was the destination of over 162,000 British felons between 1787 and 1869, and the contemporary distribution of punishments must be understood within this colonial context. Australia is a country with rising prison populations. In 1986, there were 70 prisoners per 100,000 of the population. By 1996, the rate had risen to 119, with an average daily population (ADP) of 16,399 adult prisoners. In 2006, this had increased once again to a rate of 126 and an ADP of 25,353 prisoners. There is no federal penal system and punishments are delivered by the different states of Australia.

Two issues are central to understanding contemporary imprisonment in Australia: the massive difference in rates of incarceration between states and the over-representation of Aboriginal people in prison.

Whereas some states—such as Victoria and South Australia—have comparatively low rates of 60–80 per 100,000, others—such as Queensland,

COMPARATIVE PENOLOGIES

Western Australia and New South Wales—have rates that double this, standing between 140 and 170. The imprisonment rate of the Northern Territory is twice as high again, at over 390 per 100,000. People of Aboriginal descent make up about 2 per cent of the overall Australian population, but over 20 per cent of the prison population. In the mid1990s, the imprisonment rate of Aboriginal men was 2,749 per 100,000; for Aboriginal women, the rate stood at 152. In the Northern Territory, Aborigines constitute 70 per cent of the prison population. In general, Australian states with high Aboriginal populations tend to have higher rates of imprisonment.

Bra zil Brazil is a federal republic with 26 states. Around 45 per cent of the Brazilian population live in extreme poverty, with 69 million people earning less than $100 per month. Many of the poor live in slums (‘favelas’). In 1834, Brazil became the first Latin American nation to build a penitentiary, adopting the idea from the southern states of the USA. Today, there is no federal prison system and therefore penal administration is the responsibility of each given state. The military police are responsible for the external security of all prisons. In 2001, there were 147 military prisons, 100 penitentiaries, 66 public jails and 33 agricultural penal colonies in Brazil. In 1995, there were 95 prisoners per 100,000 of the population and an ADP of 148,760 prisoners. In 1997, this had increased to 109 prisoners per 100,000 and an ADP of 170,602. By 2006, the rate had rocketed to 191 prisoners per 100,000, an ADP of 361,402. This is an increase of the ADP of over 190,000 in less than ten years.

Brazilian prisons are filled with the relative surplus population and their practices are rooted in the doctrine of less eligibility. Ninety six per cent of Brazilian prisoners are men, and they are largely unemployed and sentenced for robbery, theft or drug trafficking. Prisons are acutely overcrowded, with poor hygiene, living conditions and health care.

Prison labour is low skilled and the profound dehumanisation of prison life has led to an epidemic of sexual violence, mutiny, rebellion and violent escapes, and to deadly clampdowns by the Brazilian military on prisoners and their families.

62 PENOLOGY C hina China is a People’s Republic and has a population of 1,308.7 million. The Communist Party dominates and has a poor reputation for upholding the human rights of its citizens. In China, strong government is good government. Keeping face is culturally very important, and requires both individuals and the state to appear dignified and in control. In 1978, China ‘modernised’ and introduced major economic reforms. This not only led to massive economic growth, but also had significant social consequences. There is high labour mobility and massive internal migration of transient populations, with around 50–60 million people per day on the road in China. This migration is coupled with rising unemployment, inflation, crime rates and recidivism. Incarceration in China is divided between the detention sector and the prison sector. Detentions are organised by the Ministry of Public Security and we do not know exactly how many people are incarcerated. Penal philosophy is linked to ‘thought reform’ and the transformational role of penal labour, which has roots in the Confucian tradition under which physical labour is understood as a form of enslavement. This tradition was reinforced by the importation of Western penal philosophy in the last dynasty of China in the nineteenth century and by the influence of the Soviet Marxist Gulags in the twentieth century. Until recently, prisoners were leased out to local employers, who were obliged to offer them work after release. To counter claims of slavery, in December 1994, the Chinese renamed ‘reform through labour’ as imprisonment.

The economic reforms that China introduced in the 1970s have undermined both informal means of social control and the effectiveness of its rehabilitative programmes. The rise of unemployment, crime and recidivism has led the Chinese government to lose its socialist face, but its restoration can only be achieved if it is prepared to lose further face by reversing its free market reforms.

Finland Finland is a secular and highly bureaucratic social democratic government. Like other Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland), Finland is heavily influenced by its neighbours. It is a small country with a population of 5.3 million.

COMPARATIVE PENOLOGIES

Finland’s prison rate had dropped from the very high rate of 190 per 100,000 in 1950 to 118 by 1976. From this time, Finland witnessed an unbroken 23-year reduction in imprisonment rates until 1999. The rate stood at 55 in 1995 and fell as low as 46 per 100,000 in 1999. In recent years, however, the prison population has started to increase again, standing at 75 per 100,000 in 2006. The fluctuating imprisonment rate has had little impact on the recorded rate of ‘crime’ and the Finnish governments have so far been successful in keeping penal policy away from populist political rhetoric (Cavadino and Dignan, 2006).

Japan Japan is an ‘oriental liberal corporatist’ capitalist state (Cavadino and Dignan, 2006) and, in recent times, has had a very low imprisonment rate. Japan is a group-orientated society and citizenship is closely tied to the collective identity of the nation. There is close social integration into families, and both the education system and workplace foster mutual bonds. The Japanese culturally favour informal mechanisms of social control as opposed to penal harshness, and honour, shame, apology and reciprocal obligations to others have special significance in everyday life. The vast majority of Japanese offenders confess and repent, and those offenders who can show a capacity for resocialisation are likely to receive suspended sentences or probation. Japan has very harsh and authoritarian laws, but these are mitigated by the discretionary lenience of practitioners. In this sense, the criminal justice system provides an ideological function that can promote the impression of majesty, justice and mercy. In 1935, Japan had an ADP of 55,000 prisoners (56 per 100,000). It then reached the very high level of 198 per 100,000 in 1950, before declining to 64 in 1970 and reaching a low of 36 per 100,000 in 1992. In 1999, the prison rate stood at 42 per 100,000 and, by 2002, Japan had an imprisonment rate of 52 per 100,000. In 2006, this had edged up to 62 per 100,000 of the national population, which is nearly double the rate of 14 years earlier. Prison life is highly regimented and very orderly. Punishments are intended to foster social inclusion and reintegration. The movement of a prisoner, even in his or her cell, is heavily controlled. In 1990, for example, there were only three escapes from Japanese prisons. Prisoners who have tried to escape, or who are perceived as a discipline problem, are made to wear leather or metal restraints that immobilise the movement of their hands.

64 PENOLOGY

Japanese life and culture operates through highly restrictive, repressive and disciplinarian authoritarian communitarian principles that permeate the whole of society and which Western people can find intolerably oppressive.

South Africa South Africa is a country that is in transition from an authoritarian apartheid society to one that is rooted in the principles of democracy.

Despite recent changes, South Africa’s 47 million inhabitants remain profoundly divided in terms of race, class and power. The political system was transformed when the African National Congress (ANC) gained power in 1994, but post-apartheid South Africa’s great divides in wealth and power have not yet been adequately addressed.

In 1980, South Africa had a prison rate of 423 per 100,000: at that time, the highest in the world. In 1995, the official imprisonment rate declined to 273 per 100,000 of the general population. Although many members of the now-ruling party, the ANC, have experienced imprisonment at first hand, this has not led to a concerted effort to reduce imprisonment for the largely poor Black property offenders who are incarcerated. Indeed, by 2006, the rates had crept back up to 335 per 100,000 and an ADP of 157,402 prisoners.

USA The USA is the most advanced capitalist and the richest nation on earth; it also has the largest prison population. It is an economic and cultural leader, and this ‘imperialism’ can also be seen in terms of penal policy. In the late 1960s, US President Richard Nixon adopted a tough ‘law and order’ ideology that has led to an increase in prison populations since the mid-1970s that is unprecedented in a democratic society. This expansionism was further fuelled by the ‘war on drugs’ that was initiated by President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. In 1980, 19 people out of every 1,000 people arrested for drug offences were sent to prison. By 1992, this had increased to 104. The USA’s ADP of prisoners stood at 744,208 in 1986. By 1998, it had reached 1,725,842

COMPARATIVE PENOLOGIES

prisoners. In February 2000, the USA ADP broke the 2 million mark and, by 2006, it had continued to rise to 2,186,230. This leaves the USA with an imprisonment rate of 737 prisoners per 100,000 of the general population. In 2006, the number of people under correctional supervision (i.e. in prison, on probation or on parole) was 6.9 million—over 3 per cent of the population. Louisiana had the highest incarceration rate (795), while Minnesota had the lowest (142). About half of the US prison population is made up of African Americans, although they constitute only 13 per cent of the general population. One in three young Black men are currently in prison, on parole or on probation. Black American men are eight times more likely to be imprisoned than are White Americans and, if current trends continue, a staggering 29 per cent of Black American men born today will end up in prison at some point during their lifetime.

A number of penologists in the USA have pointed out the continuities between slavery and imprisonment, and how the rich are getting richer, while the poor only get prison (Reiman, 2007).

Vene zuela Venezuela had one of the worst reputations for the treatment of prisoners in the 1990s. Like many Latin American nations, it held a large number of pretrial detainees, with prisoners awaiting trial for an average of three years. The armed forces ran the penal system, and prisons were filled with prisoners accused of drug-related offences, terrorism and offences ‘against public security’. In 1992, the ADP was at least 29,000, with a capacity of just over 15,000. In this period, not even Venezuela’s Director of Prisons knew how many people were in prison. There was massive overcrowding and, to compound this, prison conditions were very poor and violence was endemic: Venezuelan prisons had the greatest known number of prisoners killed daily in the world. In recent years, there have been major political changes in Venezuela and the prison population has decreased. In 2006, the ADP was officially 19,853, with an imprisonment rate of 74 per 100,000.

Despite some progress, many of the serious problems that plagued the Venezuelan penal system in the last century remain.

66 PENOLOGY Learning the lessons? Comparative analysis can lead us to a greater understanding of the forms that punishment is currently taking and what factors may underscore current trends. This can lead us to certain conclusions about the justifications, use, nature and extent of imprisonment.

COMPARATIVE PENOLOGIES

Have we seen a greater harmonisation and intensification of penal “sanctions in Western European nations? ”

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68 PENOLOGY Te x t b o o k g u i d e

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Running themes

THE HISTORY AND AIMS OF IMPRISONMENT

Key penologists

The Bloody Code The historian assembles data and is even more aware than the physical scientist how inadequate his [sic] data are. Much of the evidence on which we

70 PENOLOGY could base our knowledge of the past has either been destroyed or was never recorded. We guess from the few remaining fragments much as geologists reconstructs a prehistoric monster from a single bone. (Taylor, 1968, p. 11)

In England in 1166, King Henry II issued the Assize of Clarendon, which ordered his sheriffs to build a jail in each county. Jails held debtors and felons awaiting trial. In 1556, the first ‘house of correction’ was established at Bridewell and, in 1609, James I made such houses of correction (popularly referred to as ‘Bridewells’) obligatory in every English county. These facilities held people who were sent to prison for very short sentences. Alongside this, the workhouse enshrined the principle of less eligibility and was intimately linked to birth of the prison. The control of women rulebreakers was different from that of men. Women were controlled largely through informal patriarchal social controls, but, in terms of the development of penal institutions, the nunnery was a crucial instrument in disciplining deviant, rebellious and sexually promiscuous women.

In 1750, England was a small parochial society and its population stood at 6.5 million. Seventy-five per cent of the population lived in the countryside and three-quarters worked in agriculture. Local landowners were often the local magistrates and these enforced the law. At this time, there were over 200 separate Acts that commanded the penalty of death (by public hanging). This system of laws and punishments has become known as the ‘Bloody Code’. Despite its apparent barbarity, however, only about 10 per cent of people sentenced to death were actually executed. For historian Douglas Hay (1975), the Bloody Code was really an ideological system of social control combining:

THE HISTORY AND AIMS OF IMPRISONMENT

Alongside public hangings, the Transportation Act 1718 introduced the transportation of offenders and, from 1718 to 1775, over 30,000 people were transported to the USA. The US War of Independence ended this practice, but, 12 years later in 1787, transportation was reintroduced. From 1787 to 1869, 162,000 people were transported to Australia.

Remember that there are different historical perspectives. When reading a history book, try to locate the theoretical perspective from which the author is writing.

The age of reform In the eighteenth century, there were a number of significant changes that undermined the Bloody Code. Industrialisation, urbanisation and massive population growth transformed the old agricultural and parochial system. By 1800, the population stood at 15 million and an anonymous society was being formed that was not beholden to the local gentry. Stan Cohen (1985, p. 13) argues that, during this period, new master patterns of social control developed. These comprised:

The context to the development of these master patterns of control included:

There was a change in emphasis from elimination to reclamation and a rise in the belief that new ‘reformed prisons’ could act as a ‘technology of salvation’.

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Two diametrically opposed philosophies developed. On the one hand, Christian reformers believed in the concepts of original sin and the universality of guilt. Immorality was to be rectified by manipulating the shameful offender, using isolation in a prison cell as a condition under which he or she might reflect on, and repent of, his or her unrighteousness. Utilitarian philosophers, on the other hand, pleaded for the universality of reason and that reformation could only take place through the socialisation of the offender’s proclivity for pleasure. This would be achieved by constant inspection.

The ‘great experiment’ The Hulk Act 1776 was the first move towards a convict prison and the principles of reformation. These ‘floating hells’ were rife with disease and many prisoners lost their lives in these miserable wooden coffins. William Eden, Willan Blackstone and John Howard introduced the Penitentiary Act 1779.

These reforms had been introduced in response to the end of transportation to the USA and, when transportation to Australia started, the reform movement lost some momentum. In 1810, however, Samuel Romily argued that the Penitentiary Act should be resurrected. The government responded by appointing the Holford Committee (1810), which recommended that a convict prison should be built. It was to be placed at Millbank, on the River Thames in London (McConville, 1995).

THE HISTORY AND AIMS OF IMPRISONMENT

monument of ugliness

maniac-making machine

The convict prison was born, although it had clearly been a hard labour. In 1842, Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP), Pentonville, was opened. It held 520 prisoners in separate cells and became the new model prison of the Victorian era. Its regime was based on:

In 1865, the Prison Act finally ended the official difference between ‘jails’ and ‘houses of correction’, renaming them ‘local prisons’ and, in 1877, the Prison Act gave the Home Office control of the prison system. Following this period the modern prison was to become the ultimate sanction of the state.

It is very important that you have a solid grasp of penal history. You will be able to understand the present use of imprisonment much better if you are able to understand its past, so spend some time reading about the development of the prison.

The aims of imprisonment in the twentieth century Under the guidance of Sir Edmund du Cane, the penal system was harsh, brutal and rooted in the doctrine of less eligibility. Less eligibility is predicated on the assumption that there exists a universal free, rational and calculating subject who is infused with an individual sense of responsibility. Criminal activity is understood as a free choice that is based upon weighing up the

74 PENOLOGY (Continued) potential benefits and costs of such behaviour. Harsh and punitive regimes will instil moral fibre, discipline and backbone into the criminal, thus eradicating the individual deficiencies that were major factors for his or her offence. The application of the doctrine of less eligibility therefore ensures that the upper margin of prison conditions are guaranteed not to rise above the worst material conditions in society as a whole and so, in times of social hardship, the rigours of penal discipline become more severe to prevent weakening its deterrent effect.

The disciplinary practices of du Cane were eventually challenged when the Gladstone Committee was commissioned. For Gladstone: prison discipline and treatment should be more effectually designed to maintain, stimulate, or awaken the higher susceptibilities of prisoners, to develop their moral instincts to train them in orderly and industrial habits, and whenever possible to turn them out of prison better men and women, both physically and morally, than when they came in. (1895, cited in Radzinowicz and Hood, 1986, pp. 577–8)

Gladstone did not so much break with the past and the philosophical underpinnings of less eligibility as introduce a new manifest task of prison treatment. This new treatment and training ideology had gained ascendancy by the 1920s. Treatment and training focused upon rehabilitation through work, education, physical training and the nurturing of positive staff relationships. While the treatment and training ideology remained embedded as the orientating rationale of the Prison Service until the late 1970s, there were a number of important official reports on prisons in the 1960s and 1970s that helped to shape the aims of imprisonment during this period. The Mountbatten Report (1966) was written after a number of high-profile escapes and focused on increasing prison security. Mountbatten proposed that all male prisoners should be classified into four categories: A, B, C, or D.

Mountbatten advocated what is known as a concentration policy, which would have placed high-risk prisoners together and allowed much lower security across the rest of the penal estate.

THE HISTORY AND AIMS OF IMPRISONMENT

The Radzinowicz Report (1968) was the report of a subcommittee of the Advisory Council on the Penal System, chaired by Leon Radzinowicz, a Cambridge professor. The committee rejected the concentration policy in favour of what is known as the ‘dispersal policy’. Under this policy, Category A prisoners were to be dispersed with Category B prisoners in specially designed high-security training prisons. The adoption of the dispersal policy led to a heightened focus on risk and security across the penal system. Another very important official report of this period was that of the May Committee (Home Office, 1979). Chaired by Judge Mr Justice May, the committee advocated the, now quietly forgotten, notion of ‘positive custody’. This proposal was met with official silence and faced devastating criticism from influential penological commentators.

Common pitfall The recommendations of official reports do not have to be accepted by the government. Some recommendations will become policies, but others are discarded.

In the early 1980s, a new liberal penological consensus developed in opposition to the doctrines of less eligibility, treatment and training, and positive custody. The consensus was a form of penal realism that was rooted in the principles of ‘humane containment’. Humane containment had the modest aim of simply holding those committed to custody by the courts in safe, humane and publicly acceptable living conditions. Penal realism may, unfortunately, accurately sum up about all that is achievable through imprisonment, but such an agenda could hardly provide inspiration for those administering punishments. The ‘starkness’ of humane containment led one influential liberal commentator to consider this aim to be ‘ontologically insufficient’ (Bottoms, 1990, p. 9). The liberal penological consensus reached its high tide with the publication of the Woolf Report on the 25 February 1991. Lord Justice Woolf had been commissioned to investigate the disturbances that occurred at HMP Manchester from 1 April – 25 April 1990 and those that occurred at five further institutions: Glen Parva Dartmoor, Cardiff, Bristol, and Pucklechurch. The Woolf Report (1991) is widely regarded as the most significant official report on prisons in England and Wales since the Gladstone Report (1895, cited in Radzinowicz and Hood, 1986, p. 85).

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security, control and justice

In 1993, the Prison Service became a ‘next steps’ agency and the aims of imprisonment were revised to be in tune with the now politically dominant ‘managerialist’ ethos.

Managerialism promises autonomy, entrepreneurship and innovation, prioritising costeffectiveness, service efficiency and value for money, while at the same time apparently guaranteeing quality services and products. Promising new flexible and responsive services that can better address the needs of service users, managerialism privileged new rational purposes, goals, mission statements and visions for the prison, and the promotion of new methods to enhance its performance. Under the guise of new public managerialism, the Prison Service developed strategic business plans and targets for monitoring achievement, and commissioned reviews and reports to measure progress and provide evidence of ‘value for money’. Importantly, managerialism is framed through a preoccupation with organisational design that is pragmatic and orientated towards action and change—i.e. means rather than ends. Underscoring the logic of managerialism is the privileging of the consumer: the free, rational, empowered and

THE HISTORY AND AIMS OF IMPRISONMENT

(Continued) self-disciplined, self-governing subject is morally responsible for the good or bad choices that he or she makes, and thus for minimising or maximising potential risks. When bad things happen, blame falls squarely on the flawed consumer’s shoulders. Further, consumers have only a certain set of entitlements and expectations that are detailed in compacts or contracts, as opposed to the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

Its Corporate Plan 1993–6 (1993b) provided details of the Prison Service’s new managerial vision, goals and values. Alongside this, the Plan also identified eight key performance indicators (KPIs). Remarkably, in the space of only a few years, the Prison Service had shifted from a sense of realism, under which any progressive aims of imprisonment seemed beyond its reach, to the delivery of a plethora of indicators, purposes, visions, goals and values that appeared to have little in common with the aims that had been promoted during the previous decade. In September 1994, six prisoners escaped from Whitemoor Special Security Unit. The escapees had rope, bullets, two guns, over £400 and a torch. One officer was shot during the escape. Recommendation 62 of the resulting Woodco*ck Report (1994) emphasised the ‘central importance of security in all aspects of activity’ and that all new policies ‘should be tested against whether they add to or detract from security standards’. The government ordered a new inquiry to review security procedures, but its terms of reference were altered by a further politically embarrassing escape: this time by three prisoners, from Parkhurst Prison, Isle of Wight, on 3 January 1995. On this occasion, the escapees had tools, a ladder, a toy gun that fired blanks and a key. The Learmont Report (1995) proposed that prisons should protect the public and deter potential offenders by keeping those sent to them by the courts in ‘custody’; prisons should ‘care’ for the prisoner by providing opportunities for him or her to learn from his or her mistakes. It also proposed the development of family ties and the making of redress, along with the ‘control’ of prisoners though inducements, based on both incentives and sanctions, and on the better training of prison officers. This renewed emphasis on security was heavily critiqued by liberal commentators as amounting to the creation of new highly repressive and dehumanising iron coffins. Since 1997, there has been renewed penal optimism that the prison can be a special place in which to rehabilitate and responsibilise offenders. The Prison Service Strategic Framework (1998a) provided yet further elaboration of the aims of the Prison Service—this time detailed through aims, objectives and principles.

78 PENOLOGY Aim Effective execution of the sentences of the courts so as to reduce re-offending and protect the public Objectives Protect the public by holding those committed by the courts in a safe, decent and healthy environment Reduce crime by providing constructive regimes which address offending behaviour, improve educational and work skills and promote law-abiding behaviour in custody and after release Principles Deal fairly, correctly and openly with staff, prisoners and all who come into contact with us Work effectively with other bodies Help prisoners to take responsibility for their behaviour, to respect the rights of others, to maintain links with their families and the wider community Value the contribution of staff, ensuring that they are effectively prepared and supported in the work they do Obtain best value from resources provided

The history and aims of imprisonment in Northern Ireland and Scotland Tomlinson (1996) points out that Northern Irish prisons cannot be understood without consideration of:

Ireland was incorporated in the United Kingdom under the Act of Union in 1800, although it had been subject to British control for a number of centuries. The first prison in Ireland opened in Dublin at Richmond in 1818. After nationalist uprisings, the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1920 left only Northern Ireland under British rule, but partition did not end the republican struggle. The struggle became increasingly intense in the late 1960s, with the denial of civil rights for Catholic citizens and the murder of unarmed protestors on what became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’.

THE HISTORY AND AIMS OF IMPRISONMENT

During the Troubles, a number of people were interned (held without trial). In 1975, the Gardiner Committee ended the special status of political prisoners and such prisoners were housed in rapidly built ‘H-blocks’ at Lomng Kesh, near Belfast, and Magilligan, near Derry. In response, political prisoners refused to wear prison clothes and to wash, and covered their cell walls in human excrement. Out of desperation, republican prisoners embarked on a sustained hunger strike, leading to the deaths of ten prisoners in 1981, including Bobby Sands who had been elected as an MP during these protests. The Good Friday Agreement— signed in April 1998—had a major impact on the Prison Service in Northern Ireland and, from September 1998, led to the release of many paramilitary prisoners. The current aims of the Northern Ireland Prison Service are set out in its vision and values. Our vision ‘To be recognised as a model of good practice in dealing with prisoners and to be valued and respected for our service to the community.’ Our values Recognising that the Service requires the commitment of all of us; Leading well and behaving with integrity; Upholding prisoners’ human rights and working with them as individuals to become law-abiding; Ensuring that we each have the required skills and competencies; Accepting responsibility and accountability; Managing resources, including our time, cost effectively; Showing an innovative approach to our work; Team-working and acting in partnership with other organisations; Demonstrating a commitment to fairness, equality and respect for each other and those we are in contact with. (www.niprisonservice.gov.uk)

Prisons and houses of correction were not as entrenched in Scotland as they were in England and Wales, being fewer in number and housing relatively small numbers of people. Although Bridewells did exist in places such as Glasgow, a correctional system did not develop in Scotland until the 1830s. In 1839, the (Scottish) Prison Act introduced a General Board that undertook the daily administration of prisons and, in 1842, a new ‘general prison’ was opened at Perth. Later, developments under the Prisons (Scotland) Administration Act 1860 and Prisons

80 PENOLOGY (Scotland) Act 1877 created a centralised system with one penitentiary and 56 county prisons. Remarkably, one of the first steps in the new centralised system was to reduce the number of prisons to 15 by the 1890s. In 1939, the administration of prisons was given to the Secretary of State for Scotland and, until recently, prisons were run by the Scottish Office and Health Department. Today, the Scottish Prison Service is an agency of the Scottish Executive and launched its vision for the future in September 2000: ‘We will be recognised as the leader in prisons’ correctional work which helps to reduce recidivism and thereby offers value for money for the taxpayer.’

The key aims of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) are custody, order, care and opportunity.

The Scottish Prison Service aspires to meet its aims by concentrating on five key themes: Leadership in correctional Service A prison estate that is fit for the purpose Highest Standards of Service Respect for our Staff Value for Money for the Taxpayer (www.sps.gov.uk)

reforms continue in the mid-nineteenth century in the “faceWhyof didsuchpenal obvious humanitarian failure at Millbank and Pentonville prisons? ”

PENAL POLICY

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Running themes

Performance and privatisation A ‘performance culture’ was first introduced into the Prison Service in England and Wales in 1984. From 1993 onwards, managerial buzzwords and performance monitoring through KPIs and targets, managerial standards and internal audits have had a massive impact on Prison Service policies and practices, and have opened the door to the threat of market testing. Under the principles of ‘new public managerialism’ (NPM), the capitalist state is transformed from a provider of public services to a ‘facilitator’ or ‘purchaser’ of services. Competition in the marketplace and privatisation are perceived as the spurs to innovation, cost effectiveness and value for (taxpayers’) money. Through embracing a competitive ethos and new management techniques centring on ‘ownership’, ‘visions’ and ‘mission statements’, existing public sector services are expected to improve their performance significantly. This performance culture and its associated standards are rooted in the requirement of the government to be able to measure, monitor and audit public service outputs. If performance is poor, a competitor can replace the current public service provider.

The three broad criteria for successful performance revolve around economy, efficiency and effectiveness. ‘Economy’ refers to prioritising those methods that are most suited to obtaining the best possible results for the resources utilised. The ‘holy grail’ of efficiency entails the securing of the maximum output of the organisation for the minimum resources expended. ‘Effectiveness’ refers to the compliance between organisational goals and the actual outputs.

PENAL POLICY

NMP has been criticised on the following grounds.

The Prison Service is constantly updating its data on penal performance on its website. This can be a source of more up-to-date information for your essays than that which is cited in textbooks.

84 PENOLOGY (Continued)

Privatisation occurs when government functions are systematically transferred to the private sector. Cavadino and Dignan (2007) argue

PENAL POLICY

that there are three main ways in which privatisation has impacted on prisons:

The main penal entrepreneurs are: Group 4; Premier Prisons; UKDS; and Tarmac Constructions Ltd. Wolds Remand Centre, run by Group 4, opened in April 1992. There are currently 13 private prisons in England and Wales. Prison privatisation has a very long history, but it was reintroduced in the 1990s because of the:

Rather than adding to penal legitimacy, privatisation creates new problems in addition to the current crises that the penal system faces.

Common pitfall The debate on penal privatisation is polarised. Ensure that you read sources from all of the different perspectives.

86 PENOLOGY ‘Making punishment work’ In recent times, there have been three main periods of penal policy. From the late 1980s until 1993, prisons were generally considered to be ineffective and counterproductive. The Home Office White Paper Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public (1990) described incarceration as an ‘expensive way of making bad people worse’ (p. 6). The government was committed to penal reduction and the Criminal Justice Act 1991 enshrined the principles of just deserts: that punishment should be restricted to serious (i.e. violent and sexual) offences and that the sentence should be proportionate to the offence committed. Much of the success in containing, and then reducing, the prison populations has been attributed to Douglas Hurd, Home Secretary during the late 1980s. From 1993–1997, however, the political landscape changed and Michael Howard, the Conservative Home Secretary during this period, argued that prisons ‘worked’ in terms of incapacitation and deterrence. The Home Office Protecting the Public (1996) stated simply that ‘the Government firmly believes that prison works’ (p. 4). Howard advocated increased security, austere regimes and a return to less eligibility.

Common pitfall There are a number of Criminal Justice Acts and laws relating to prisons, probation and sentencing. Ensure that you always check for recent changes to legislation and government White Papers.

With the election of ‘New’ Labour in 1997 came another shift in emphasis. The intention now was to make prisons work, with prisons perceived to be a major opportunity to responsibilise and rehabilitate offenders. In 1997, Jack Straw, the first New Labour Home Secretary, made a commitment to constructive regimes, stating ‘we believe prisons can be made to work as one element in a radical and coherent strategy to protect the public by reducing crime’ (cited in HMCIP, 1998, p. 19). A little later, influential liberal penal reformer Lord Justice Woolf (2002) argued that ‘[al]though prison remains very expensive … I now believe that it can be an expensive way of making people better’ (p. 6).

new penal credo

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(Continued)

The most significant policy document on prisons under the New Labour Government is the Halliday Report, Making Punishments Work (2001). The Report called for the virtual abolition of short-term sentences and the end to the proportionality principle that underscored the Criminal Justice Act 1991.

Halliday argued that, instead, sentences should reflect previous convictions. This focus was underscored by the unsubstantiated claim that 50 per cent of all ‘crimes’ were committed by a hard core of 100,000 persistent offenders. This persistence principle for sentencing, however, is only likely to criminalise poor and petty property offenders, and to lead to greater discrimination in the penal system.

Halliday advocated that intensive efforts should be made to rehabilitate persistent offenders through ‘intrusive and punitive sentences’. The opportunity to protect the public through reducing reoffending would be pursued within an ‘appropriate punitive envelope’. He proposed a twin-track approach in penal policy, distinguishing between tough measures for serious and dangerous offenders, and lenient approaches for ordinary offenders. This bifurcated approach revisited the debates on policy of the 1970s and 1980s (see, for example, Bottoms, 1977; Hudson, 1993). Halliday also proposed a new generic ‘community punishment order’ and the need for improved co-operation between criminal justice agencies. The government accepted these proposals in the 2002 White Paper Justice for All and the subsequent Criminal Justice Act 2003.

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(Continued)

Custody plus Custody minus

The fulfilment of the changes brought about by the Halliday Report and the Criminal Justice Act 2003 required major organisational changes in the national probation and prison services. The government duly published the Carter Review, Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime: A New Approach, on 6 January 2004. Carter promoted rehabilitation through accredited ‘What Works’ programmes and argued that, for this to be effective, the ‘silos’ between the ‘correctional’ services had to be broken down. This was to be done by creating an umbrella organisation that could provide the case management of offenders from sentence to release. Without consultation, the government published Reducing Crime, Changing Lives: The Government’s Plans for Transforming the Management of Offenders, which outlined the introduction of a National Offender Management Service (NOMS) in June 2004.

A further theme that has developed is that it is the victim who is the real customer of the correctional services (Home Office, 2004c). The

PENAL POLICY

government wishes to bring about a cultural change to improve customer services and to reduce offending in the interests of victims. According to Tony Blair (2004): Sentencing will ensure the public is protected from the most dangerous and hardened criminals but will offer the rest the chance of rehabilitation … This whole programme amounts to a modernising and rebalancing of the entire criminal justice system in favour of victims and the community.

Penal pressure groups often provide invaluable commentaries on recent policies.

Cognitive behaviouralism and what works Under New Labour, properly managed prisons are seen as an opportunity to responsibilise offenders and to reduce the risk of reoffending. A sentence of imprisonment is expected to transform serious and persistent offenders by improving their life skills and addressing the drivers that can trigger crime. Prisoners should be given opportunities to make choices that help them to learn how to behave responsibly. This responsibilisation process is managed and integrated with other criminal justice agencies and punishments in the community. Reducing the risk of reoffending is tied to the ‘What Works’ rehabilitative agenda, which roots the causes of offending behaviour in each individual offender’s cognitive defects and deficient thinking skills. There are a number of accredited ‘What Works’ programmes in prison.

Critics have claimed, however, that the ‘What Works’ rehabilitative programmes are epistemologically flawed. This is because ‘What Works’:

90 PENOLOGY

Common pitfall Do not confuse ‘What Works’ with ‘prison works’. Both ideologies argue that prison has a utility, but each focuses on very different philosophical justifications.

Decency, moral performance and human rights Managerialism has become all-pervasive in penal policy during the last two decades. Humanitarian penologists and practitioners have looked to counter the dehumanising aspects of managerialism in three ways:

The ‘decency’ agenda was initiated by Martin Narey (HM Prison Service Director General, 1999–2003) and his successor Phil Wheatley. The decency agenda is intended to run like a golden thread through all aspects of the service’s work. Decency means treatment within the law, delivering promised standards, providing fit and proper facilities, giving prompt attention to prisoners concerns and protecting them from harm. It means providing prisoners with a regime that gives variety and helps them to rehabilitate. It means fair and consistent treatment by staff. (HM Prison Service, 2003a, p. 29)

PENAL POLICY

Physical conditions Staff–prisoner relationships

Legality Anything questioning legitimacy

it means all things to all people old wine in new bottles

The evaluative criteria of ‘moral performance’ are championed by liberal penologist Alison Liebling. She argues that there have been many positive changes in imprisonment following the rise of performance indicators. Liebling argues that this managerialist agenda can be expanded by undertaking appreciative inquiries (AI) into prison life and by developing ‘Measuring Quality of Prison Life’ (MQPL) surveys.

what matters Relationship dimensions Regime dimensions

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(Continued) Social structure dimensions Individual items

A third response has been to promote prisoners’ human rights. This gained some momentum with the implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) in October 2000, but the courts have interpreted the HRA conservatively, while the Prison Service has largely ignored it and has given staff little training. When the HRA has been discussed in official documents, the Service has outlined how it believes current policies are ‘ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights]-proof’, vigorously defended them, or emphasised the importance of responsibilities. The Government’s objective is to promote a culture of rights and responsibilities throughout our society. The Act will make people more aware of the rights they already have but also balance these with responsibilities to others. (HM Prison Service, 2000, p. 1, emphasis added)

The promotion of human rights remains an underdeveloped response to managerial forms of penal performance.

Resettlement and pathways out of crime The Social Exclusion Report (Social Exclusion Unit, 2002) identified a number of key factors involved in reoffending. These included truancy,

PENAL POLICY

unemployment, illicit substance misuse, health, debt, homelessness, social capital and family problems.

Part of the role of the Prison Service is to help to resettle offenders back into the community on release. Despite the many different problems identified as confronting prisoner ‘resettlement’, the Service has, to date, only been actively involved in assisting ex-prisoners and those on parole to find employment and/or accommodation.

In recent times, prison industries and workshops have aimed to provide skills that fit the demands of the labour market. This draws remarkable parallels with the arguments proposed by Marxist penologists.

Is the Prison Service committed to treating prisoners with dignity and “respect? ”

94 PENOLOGY Taking

it F U R T H E R

Are we witnessing the emergence of ‘welfare through punishment’?

through

beyond

Te x t b o o k g u i d e

PENAL ADMINISTRATION AND PRISONER POPULATIONS 95

2.7 p e n a l a d ministr a tio n a n d pris o n e r p o p ul a tio n s

Running themes

96 PENOLOGY The structure of the penal administration in England and Wales On 9 May 2007, responsibility for prisons, probation and sentencing was moved from the Home Office to the Department of Constitutional Affairs, which was renamed the Ministry of Justice. Lord Falconer of Thoroton was originally appointed as the new Secretary of Justice, but, at the end of June 2007, Gordon Brown, the new Prime Minister, replaced Lord Falconer with Jack Straw.

The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) deals with the delivery of prison and probation services. The nine ROMs in England, and the Director of Offender Management in Wales, commission offender services from a range of providers in the public and private sectors. The current Chief Executive of NOMS is Helen Edwards and she chairs the NOMS board, which includes the Director General of HM Prison Service and the Director of Probation. NOMS has a budget of around £4 billion. The aims of NOMS are to:

The current Director General of HM Prison Service is Phil Wheatley. Since 1993, the Prison Service has been an executive agency of the

PENAL ADMINISTRATION AND PRISONER POPULATIONS 97

Home Office (now Ministry of Justice). The HM Prison Service ‘statement of purpose’ reads: Her Majesty’s Prison Service serves the public by keeping in custody those committed by the courts. Our duty is to look after them with humanity and help them lead law-abiding and useful lives in custody and after release. (www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk)

The Home Office was the main government body for penal administration before May 2007. It continues to exist, but is now more focused on security.

Since June 2004, the Prison Service has been part of NOMS. Sixty-eight per cent of NOMS’ 70,000 staff work within the Prison Service branch.

The penal estate In 2007, there were 139 prisons (126 public and13 private) in England and Wales. The budget for HM Prison Service is £2.6 billion per annum. It costs £600 per week on average for each prisoner (i.e. £30,000+ per annum). There are a number of different categories of prisons and prisoners for adult male prisoners.

98 PENOLOGY Not all prisoners have been convicted or sentenced. Remand prisoners make up around 19 per cent of the total prison population and the average length of time spent on remand is two months. It is worth noting that many people on remand do not receive custodial sentences at trial. There are also a small number of civil prisoners. These are people who have not broken the criminal law, but who have breached procedural rules such as ‘contempt of court’.

Current prison populations In September 2005, Charles Clarke, then Home Secretary, announced that the government had abandoned its target of keeping the upper limits of the prison population at around 80,000. According to recent Home Office estimates, the ADP for prisoners in 2010 will be at least 91,000. The current prison population reached a new high of 80,000 in December 2006, but then declined. By early 2007, however, it had once again breached 80,000. Between June 2006 and June 2007, the average daily population of prisoners increased by 3,019 (see Tables 2.2 and 2.3).

PENAL ADMINISTRATION AND PRISONER POPULATIONS 99 Table 2.2

Prisoner population in England and Wales on 1 June 2007

Male F emale Number of prisoners held in police cells under O peration S afeguard TOTAL Use able operational capacity Spaces available under O peration S afeguard* TOTAL Number under Home D etention C urfew supervision

75,973 4,377 264 80,614 81,058 400 81,458 2,269

*These vary from night to night and up to a 400-place ceiling.

Table 2.3

Prisoner population in England and Wales on 1 June 2006

Male F emale Number of prisoners held in police cells under O peration S afeguard TOTAL Use able operational capacity Number under Home D etention C urfew supervision

73,139 4,456 0 77,595 79,498 2,804

the lowest recorded rate of ADP of prisoners in recent times. the ADP of prisoners when the New Labour government was elected. the ADP of prisoners during the week in which Gordon Brown became Prime Minister.

At any one time, approximately 40 per cent of prisoners have been convicted of offences related to fraud, theft, burglary or robbery. About 15 per cent of prisoners are convicted of drug offences, which are often linked to property offences; 15 per cent of convictions are related to sexual offences and 20 per cent are for violent offences (see Figure 2.2). Approximately 80 per cent of convicted and sentenced prisoners are released within one year.

100 PENOLOGY Common pitfall Examining the average daily population (ADP) alone can give you a distorted perception. Statistics are socially constructed. The number of people in various different forms of custody in the United Kingdom is much higher than 80,000 and is likely soon to break through the 100,000 mark.

25000

20000

15000

10000

5000

0 1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

Violence Theft and handling Burglary Drug offences Fraud and forgery

2001

2002

2003

2004

Motoring Robbery

S exual offences

The exorbitant rise in prison populations is a political and policy choice, and is not a response to the official ‘crime’ rate. Indeed, the official ‘crime’ rate has declined.

According to the official ‘crime’ statistics and the British Crime Survey (BCS), most ‘crimes’ are actually going down.

British Crime Survey (BCS) figures have been on a downward trend since 1995, after a long upward trend since 1981. Police-recorded figures from the period between 1991 and 1997 identified a downward trend, but these figures have been much more ambiguous in the last ten years. In July 2006, the BCS estimated that the total ‘crime’ against private

PENAL ADMINISTRATION AND PRISONER POPULATIONS 101

households amounted to 10.9 million offences annually. This compares with an estimated 16.7 million offences annually in 1999: a fall of 35 per cent.

Offences Offences Offences Offences Offences

reported recorded leading to caution or conviction leading to conviction leading to custody

This is limited data, but, given that practitioners and politicians often present such figures as accurate and reliable accounts, their decline at the same time as prison populations increase is significant.

There are a number of reasons why the prison population has increased, including: longer prison sentences; increasing custody rates; more people on remand; the use of indeterminate sentences; the collapse of the fine; the reduced use of the Home Detention Curfew; increasing risk aversion on behalf of parole boards; more recalls of people for breaches of community sentences; the external pressures of a law and order society that uses punitive rhetoric to exploit people’s fears and anxieties to gain political ascendancy; internal pressures and the needs of professionals.

Recidivism rates for ex-prisoners remain high. The Home Office (2003) estimated that 75 per cent of young offenders and 50 per cent of adult offenders reoffended within two years of release.

Locking up the dangerous or punishing the poor? Although we often hear arguments that we punish the dangerous and protect the public, when we look at the facts of who is imprisoned and their social backgrounds, a different picture begins to emerge.

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Sentences Men Women Age Class Black

Prisoners are more likely to be socially deprived and harmed individuals than seriously dangerous to society.

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(Continued)

Young people in custody Those children who are criminalised and penalised are generally from vulnerable backgrounds. Rather than presenting a threat to adults, children in secure custody have, more often than not, been harmed by adults. Many children in custody have experienced difficult family relationships, impoverished social backgrounds and have difficulties in coping with the problems with which they are confronted in life. To add to these problems, they are taken away from what is familiar to them and placed in an unfriendly, stigmatising and physically austere environment, which may be overcrowded and which is rooted in conflict, power struggles and bullying. For penal commentators such as Barry Goldson and Debs Coles, such a deliberately painful state of affairs has, quite rightly, been described as ‘institutional child abuse’ and these critics have called for its abolition.

Involved in care or social services Mental health issues Serious drug addictions (e.g. heroin) Alcohol problems Victim of violence at home Victim of sexual abuse (girls) Victim of sexual abuse (boys)

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(Continued) Custodial institutions

Plus

Black and minority ethnic prisoners The problem of racism is deeply rooted in the history of the Prison Service. In the 1970s, many officers were members of the overtly racist organisation, the National Front. There is evidence of extreme racism among prison officers, and of the brutal treatment and harassment of minority ethnic prisoners. In 1999, Martin Narey, then its Director General, admitted that the Prison Service was ‘institutionally racist’.

Many prison staff have been accused of overreacting to disruptive behaviour by Black prisoners and of falsely stereotyping them as ‘big, Black and dangerous’. There have also been dubious statements about Black victims in prison. In 1998, Richard Tilt, former Director General, made the unsubstantiated claim that Black prisoners were more likely to die from positional asphyxia while being restrained because of their genetic disposition to sickle cell anaemia.

PENAL ADMINISTRATION AND PRISONER POPULATIONS 105

(Continued)

The death of Zahid Mubarek at Feltham YOI in March 2000 led to a number of official inquiries. The Commission for Racial Equality published two reports in 2003, which led to the HM Prison Service Prison Service Action Plan on race relations (2003b). The HMCIP published its thematic study Parallel Lives in 2005, while in 2006, the Keith Inquiry published its two-volume Report of the Zahid Mubarek Inquiry.

In February 2003, of those whose nationality was known, 12 per cent of the male prison population and 21 per cent of all women prisoners were foreign nationals. In 2007, there were believed to be over 10,000 foreign national prisoners in England and Wales. Foreign national prisoners are confronted with a variety of problems, concerns and socio-economic disadvantages, not least of which are the language barriers. The prospect of deportation and revocation of their immigration status may also increase anxiety, uncertainty and the pains of imprisonment. There is evidence in HM Inspectorate of Prisons’ reports of racism, and of the use of inappropriate language and comments. For critics, imprisonment, detention and immigration policies must be understood within the context of state racism. This analysis considers how ‘institutional racism and popular racism are woven into state racism’ (Sivanandan, 2001, p. 3).

Official data can evidence social problems and social divisions.

Women in prison The experiences and differential pains of imprisonment for women have largely been ignored.

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Populations 1965 1992 1999 2004 2007 Social backgrounds Unemployed Non-violent crimes Drugs/substance misuse Care and abuse Mothers Black Attempted suicide before prison Prisons

Recidivism rates

Women offenders have been more likely to be understood through positivistic psychobiological theories of crime and to be responded to more as psychiatric patients than as offenders.

Feminist studies have identified the different needs of women offenders and that their experiences of imprisonment are qualitatively different from those of men. Women prisoners are often relatively powerless and vulnerable, and have often been subjected to abuse on the outside. There have been many calls to abolish the imprisonment of women.

Prisons in Northern Ireland and Scotland Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) is an executive agency of the Northern Ireland Office (NIO), established on 1 April 1995. Its main

PENAL ADMINISTRATION AND PRISONER POPULATIONS 107

statutory duties are detailed in the Prison Act (Northern Ireland) 1953. Prison rules, providing guidance for the operation of the Prison Service, are made under the Act. The current Director General of the NIPS is Robin Masefield.

In the 1970s–1990s, the NIPS was heavily criticised for its treatment of political prisoners. A number of notorious prisons, such as the Maze, have been closed since the peace settlement in the 1990s. The current NIPS ‘statement of purpose’ reads: The Northern Ireland Prison Service, through our staff, serves the community by keeping in secure, safe and humane custody those committed by the courts; by working with prisoners and with organisations, seeks to reduce the risk of re-offending; and in so doing aims to protect the public and to contribute to peace and stability in Northern Ireland. (www.niprisonservice.gov.uk)

The NIPS has traditionally had low prison populations. In 1920, there were only 278 people in prison (Tomlinson, 1996). There was, however, a major escalation from the late 1960s, when the prison population rose from below 700 (of which 9 were women) to a peak of 3,000 in 1979. Since then, the population (sentenced and remand) has steadily fallen to around 1,400 prisoners. The total prison population on the 19 December 2005, for example, was 1308 (see Table 2.4). The figures included 30 women prisoners and 9 immigration detainees. On the 20 December 2006, the population stood at 1,425 prisoners, including 32 women and 1 immigration detainee. More recently, on the 10 September 2007, there were 1,444 sentenced and remand prisoners in Northern Ireland, 49 of whom were women, alongside 4 immigration detainees. The NIPS employs around 2,000 staff in a wide variety of posts. Of these, 1,600 are uniformed staff, 10 are teachers, 66 are hospital or nursing staff, and 28 are physical education instructors. There has been a

108 PENOLOGY Table 2.4 Population details for prisons in Northern Ireland on 19 December 2005 Establishments

Sentenced

Remand

348 406 12 86 852

346 0 13 88 447

Maghaberry Magilligan Hydebank Wood (female) Hydebank Wood (male) Total

Immigration detainees 4 0 5 0 9

Total 698 406 30 174 1308

very large fall in prison officer numbers since 1998: a reduction of around 40 per cent. The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) is an agency of the Scottish Executive and the current Chief Executive of the SPS board is Tony Cameron. The SPS has a budget of more than £320 million and employs over 15,000 members of staff. There are currently 15 penal establishments in Scotland. Table 2.5

SPS prisoner population on Friday 9 March 2007

Untried male adults Untried female adults Untried male young offenders Untried female young offenders S entenced male adults S entenced female adults S entenced male young offenders S entenced female young offenders R ecalled life prisoners C onvicted prisoners awaiting sentencing Prisoners awaiting deportation

1,110 61 300 14 4,619 204 622 31 68 208 8

All Scotland Total

7,245

Annual Report

PENAL ADMINISTRATION AND PRISONER POPULATIONS 109

(Continued)

What is the current organisational structure of the Prison Service in “England and Wales? ”

Taking

Te x t b o o k g u i d e

it F U R T H E R

110 PENOLOGY

2.8 s o ciolo gi e s of pris o n life

Running themes

Key penologists

SOCIOLOGIES OF PRISON LIFE

Sociological studies of imprisonment The sociologies of prison life have investigated the experiences and lived realities of prisoners and prison staff. They have generally looked at:

Sociological studies have investigated many different aspects of prison life, with authors often combining a number of the above issues in their work.

The sociologies of prison life remind us of the importance of looking at both the penal environment and the wider social contexts in which imprisonment is situated. There are a number of classic sociological

111

112 PENOLOGY studies of prisons and prisoners. One of the most important early works was Donald Clemmer’s The Prison Community (1948). This was a study of the maximum-security prison at Menard, Illinois.

Clemmer argued that prison subcultures were imported, and reflected the confinement of predominantly male, lower class and poorly educated populations.

Clemmer also argued that there existed a prisoner code emphasising loyalty, which embodied the norms and values of social backgrounds of prisoners. The code was pro-prisoner and anti-authority, and led to a process of ‘prisonisation’, which provided a means of protecting prisoners. A slightly later book, but one that laid the foundations for many subsequent studies, was Gresham Sykes’ The Society of Captives (1958). Sykes was interested in prisoner subcultures and the exercise of power at New Jersey State Maximum Security Prison, Trenton. Sykes argued that the exercise of power by prison officials lacked legitimacy and identified how officers had to offer prisoners rewards to gain their co-operation.

Sykes maintained that the prisoner subculture arose as an attempt to mitigate the deprivations that are created by the inherent pains of imprisonment: the deprivation of liberty, goods and services, of heterosexual relationships, and of autonomy and security.

Sykes also highlighted the ways in which prisoners developed a special language or ‘argot’, which was a means of communicating with other prisoners. Erving Goffman’s Asylums (1963) has also reached classic status. Goffman argued that the ‘total institution’—in his study, a mental hospital—stripped an individual of the social and cultural supports of his or her identity. This led to institutionalisation and a disculturalisation, under which people unlearn their normal social skills and sense of self. An inmate’s self was recreated through the daily rituals of institutional life, although this process could be reversed when the inmate returned to his or her previous social setting. Goffman also examined power and status in the total institution. He argued that total institutions were inherently conflictual, leading to antagonistic stereotypes

SOCIOLOGIES OF PRISON LIFE

between inmates and supervisors, and pressure on staff to ensure compliance from inmates.

Common pitfall Remember that, although we can learn many things by studying similar institutions to the prison, there are also many differences between asylums and other ‘total institutions’.

In a very important English study, Stan Cohen and Laurie Taylor undertook research while teaching at the maximum-security wing of Durham Prison. In Psychological Survival (first published in 1972), they produced a detailed and disturbing account of how long-term prisoners cope with the psychologically devastating consequences of being deprived of their liberty. For lifers in Durham prison, the self came under serious threat, undermined by a sense of futility that brought into question the meaning of life. But adaptation, passivity and powerlessness were not the only possible outcomes: prisoners could resist. Cohen and Taylor pointed not only to the inherent threats of long-term imprisonment, but also to the importance of resistance within an individual’s psychological well-being. In another well-known study, Israel Barak-Glantz (1981) developed a typology of four models of prison management.

Common pitfall Some of the earlier sociological studies looked exclusively at the experiences of men and the operation of male prisons. Some of these theories do not always fit easily with the experiences of women.

In recent times, there have also been a number of sociological studies on prison officers. In Doing Prison Work (2004), Elaine Crawley examined

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114 PENOLOGY the social world of prison officers and their families. Her main focus was on the manner in which prison work is about the management of human emotions. Another influential study is Alison Liebling and David Price’s The Prison Officer (2001). Liebling and Price undertook an AI into the culture of prison officers and their relationships with prisoners. They argued that prison officers used ‘talk’ and other hidden skills to develop positive relationships with prisoners. Underusing their powers, and relying on foresight, diplomacy, humour, discretion and their personal authority, prison officers performed a peacekeeping function. In contrast to Liebling and Price, David Scott (2006) argued that personal authority is actually deployed to enforce an asymmetrical deference norm and secure prisoner deference. The study identified four working personalities: the careerist; the humanitarian; the mortgage payer; and the disciplinarian—the dominant personality, which was immersed within the principles of less eligibility. Kelsey Kauffman (1988) undertook a detailed study of prison officers at Walpole prison, USA. A former prison officer, Kauffman highlighted the importance of solidarity and loyalty among prison officers, and the development of an informal officer code of conduct. She suggested that prison officer cultures effectively ‘other’ prisoners as lesser human beings. For Kauffman, that occupational culture is comprised of functionaries—i.e. officers who have emotionally distanced themselves from prisoners.

Read widely and look at the sociological literature from the United Kingdom and the USA. Be prepared to look at journal articles for sociological studies of prison life.

Prison conditions Prison conditions have been central to the main penological traditions. For those who believe that prisons work through deterrence, prison conditions have been suppressed, because prison life must always be worse than living conditions on the outside. Liberal and humanitarian penologists have consistently called for better conditions for prisoners and have advocated minimum legal standards. Abolitionists have argued that, even if prison conditions were to be vastly improved, it would not necessarily lead to greater penal legitimacy. Prisons with good living conditions are still rooted in the deliberate infliction of pain through the deprivation of liberty.

SOCIOLOGIES OF PRISON LIFE

Overcrowding has been a major problem for the Prison Service in recent years. The overcrowding rate in the 32 male local prisons in 2006 was 53 per cent. There was overcrowding of over 10,000 places and 74 of the 139 penal institutions had populations above their certified normal accommodation, with 15 above operational capacity (i.e. above the safety level). The consequences of overcrowding include:

The Howard League provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date information on prison overcrowding.

Prisoner health The psychological damage that imprisonment inflicts can have a negative impact on the health of all prisoners. Prison is damaging to people, rather than leading to feelings of well-being, support or growth. Three ‘hot topics’ in relation to prisoners’ health are mental health, selfinflicted deaths, and illicit substance misuse and the spread of infectious diseases.

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116 PENOLOGY Mental he alth The most vulnerable people in prison, as in wider society, are those who are either physically or mentally ill. People with mental health problems are in pain, are often unable to cope with the daily stress of life, have low self-esteem and feel isolated or alienated. Expressions of their suffering include sitting staring into space on association, neglect of personal hygiene and attempts to harm themselves.

In April 2006, the Department of Health took full responsibility for the commissioning of prison health care in all (public) prisons. Prison health care is now run by Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and private prisons must make contracts with the PCT. The aim is to provide equivalence with NHS services in the wider community. But Rickford and Edgar (2005), and others, have argued that there are a number of problems with achieving the goal of equivalence, as follow.

SOCIOLOGIES OF PRISON LIFE

Mentally ill people are more likely to be a danger to themselves rather than a danger to others. They are, however, often considered to be dangerous and suffering from dangerous and severe personality disorder (DSPD). This is a diagnosis of exclusion and many clinicians believe that DSPD cannot be treated. At the moment, there are around 2,400 prisoners who are considered to suffer from DSPD. Prison Service Order (PSO) 1700 suggests that anyone on segregation for more than three months should be considered to have a personality disorder (HM Prison Service, 2004). The problems with this direction are that:

Common pitfall When looking at prisoner mental health, you will encounter legal, medical and forensic psychology. Ensure you have a dictionary to help you to understand the technical language used.

S elf-inflicted de aths (SIDs) Imprisonment is plagued by the deaths of prisoners. The following are three tragic examples.

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118 PENOLOGY

It is important to recognise the difference between a suicide and a self-inflicted death. A self-inflicted death is when somebody takes his or her own life. This only becomes a suicide if the person who died intended to take his or her life rather than to perform an act of self-harm as a cry for help.

The number of self-inflicted deaths (SIDs) in prison has risen dramatically during the last 25 years. In 1983, there were 27 self-inflicted deaths in prison in England and Wales. We have, however, seen a steep rise in numbers in recent years, with 91 in 1999, 94 in 2002 and a record number of 95 in 2004 (see Figure 2.3). There were 67 SIDs in 2006. Disturbingly, the rate of deaths has increased once again and, before the end of September 2007, this number had already been exceeded (INQUEST, 2007b).

High-risk inadequates

SOCIOLOGIES OF PRISON LIFE 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Year S elf-inflicted Homicide

Other non-natural causes C ontrol & restraint

Poor prison conditions

People vulnerable to prison environment

Inherent harms and pains of imprisonment

Non-self-inflicted

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120 PENOLOGY Illicit substance misuse and infectious dise ases A ‘drug’ is a chemical substance that can alter your behaviour, emotions or your psychological or physical disposition. Such substances include: LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), cocaine, alcohol, heroin, tobacco, cannabis, barbiturates, MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine) or ecstasy (XTC), methadone, solvents, and caffeine.

Prisoners who use illicit substances are labelled as doubly ‘deviant’, in that they are viewed both as criminals and as drug (mis)users. Illicit substances enter prisons by a variety of sources. Some of the most common routes include their being smuggled in through visits, by prison officers, administrators or teachers, or through the delivery of supplies and ‘drops’ over the fence.

Number of prisoners who use drugs in prison Cannabis Heroin LSD/XTC

SOCIOLOGIES OF PRISON LIFE

(Continued) Cocaine Crack Amphetamines Profile of illicit substance (mis)user in prison

The most recent drug policy was set out in HM Prison Service’s Tackling Drugs in Prison: The Prison Service Drug Strategy (1998b). This is a ten-year strategy and its main priorities are to:

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122 PENOLOGY An interlinked problem with illicit substance misuse is the spread of infectious and contagious diseases. One of the most significant is the spread of HIV and AIDS in prison. The rates of HIV are higher in prisons than among the wider population and the situation is getting worse. In 1997, new diagnoses in the general population were at 2,750, but by 2005, this had increased to over 7,000. There are a number of policy options to help to contain the spread of HIV and other infectious diseases, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

A report by the Prison Reform Trust/National AIDS Trust (2005) found that HIV-positive prisoners had received inadequate health care, inferior treatment, poor facilities, low levels of medical expertise and badly trained staff who breached confidentiality of their patients.

Keep up to date with HM Prison Service and NOMS policies on substance misuse and contagious diseases.

SOCIOLOGIES OF PRISON LIFE

(Continued)

Is prison culture imported or is it created through the deprivations of “prison life? ”

Taking

it F U R T H E R

Prisoner Subcultures Power, Discourse and Resistance The Prison Governing Prisons Freedom and Justice Within Walls

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(Continued) English Prisons Today The Felon Stateville Captive Audience Open Prisons Albany Guards Imprisoned Defences of the Weak Pentonville Prisons Under Protest Prisons and the Problem of Order The Prison Office Men in Crisis Living in Prison

Te x t b o o k g u i d e

PENAL ACCOUNTABILITY

2.9 p e n a l a c c o u nt a bility

Running themes

Key penologists

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The exercise of penal power When thinking about punishment—that is, the deliberate infliction of pain—questions of legitimacy are central to any debate. To be legally and democratically accountable is a key part of any legitimate response to dealing with social harms, problems and wrongdoing.

It may come as a surprise to you to discover that there is very little literature on prison accountability and that much of what currently exists was written in the 1980s or 1990s.

Accountability, for the pro-prison lobby, has been largely reduced to concerns around cost-effectiveness and ensuring that the delivery of punishment represents value for money. Liberal penologists have accepted the right of the state to punish, but are concerned that penal power is used correctly. Although anti-prison critics have questioned the very basis of the power to punish, arguing that no one has the right to harm another person, like the liberal penologists, they are interested in how state power is held to account and in the effectiveness of formal mechanisms that are in place to ‘guard the guards’.

PENAL ACCOUNTABILITY

The stewardship model: financial and managerial accountability The first approach to accountability is to ensure that the sums add up. This financial accountability involves scrutiny of Prison Service accounts and is detailed in the Prison Service’s annual report. The ‘stewardship model’ has, however, gained increasing importance with the rise of managerialism. Tied to the principles of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, it involves an increasing focus on reducing costs and increasing performance through standards, and through key performance indicators (KPIs) and targets. The problem is that, under this managerial model, you can find out the cost of everything—but end up understanding the value of nothing.

The Prison Service is relatively transparent about its finances. This can lead to a discussion of the cost-effectiveness and fiscal logic of penal expansionism.

Inspection at home: HMIP, IMB and the PPO There are three domestic forms of penal accountability in England and Wales:

While at first appearing to provide a strong form of accountability, questions have been raised about the power of these institutions to hold the government to account, their independence and in whose interests they serve. Critics point to the difference between paying ‘lip service’ and legitimating imprisonment, and genuine forms of penal accountability.

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Safety Respect Purposeful activity Resettlement

The HMIP has only limited powers and can neither hold the Prison Service to legal account nor enforce changes, but it does provide an important shaming function, consistently producing damning reports of dreadful prison conditions. In 2006, the government attempted to abolish the HMIP, but this proposal was rejected by the House of Lords.

Common pitfall There are a large number of inspection reports published each year and it is easy to lose motivation when examining so many documents. To avoid overload, read the annual report and then individual reports that have been highlighted in the media. Also look at the thematic reports that are published regularly by the HMIP, such as those on suicide, race relations or mental health.

Known as ‘Boards of Visitors’ (BoV) until 2004, the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) has a long history in prisons in England and Wales.

Until the early 1990s, the IMB had a disciplinary function, as well as a monitoring role. Its disciplinary role had, however, been legally challenged

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since the 1970s and was ended by the Woolf Report (1991). To address claims that the BoV were ‘in the pocket of the government’, the organisation changed its name to the ‘Independent Monitoring Board’. Current members of the IMB are charged with ensuring that proper standards of care and decency are maintained in prison, and can also deal with confidential requests from prisoners. IMB volunteers are supposed to have unrestricted access to all areas and can talk to any prisoner or detainee they wish. To continue in their role, IMB volunteers must regularly attend their given prison and each IMB must produce an annual report. The IMB can play an important role as a whistleblower, highlighting brutality in prisons through its annual report, but it has no formal powers to hold an institution to account; it has only an advisory function. IMBs are not independent, however, and impartiality is also hampered through the close relationships that volunteers often develop with prison staff. Unsurprisingly, prisoners do not always trust IMB volunteers, seeing them as working in the interests of the prison rather than those of the prisoners. Although there are exceptions, most members of the IMB are middle-aged and middle class, and neither represent the wider community nor have much in common with the social backgrounds of prisoners.

The Ombudsman will examine complaints to consider whether they are eligible. To assist in this process, where there is some doubt or dispute as to the eligibility of a complaint, the Ombudsman will inform the Prison Service or the National Probation Service Area Board of the complaint and, where necessary, the Prison Service or area board will then provide the Ombudsman with such documents or other information as the Ombudsman considers are relevant to considering eligibility. (Home Office, cited in Livingstone et al., 2003, p. 50)

The current Ombudsman is Stephen Shaw, and he is responsible for investigating deaths of prisoners, immigration detainees and residents

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130 PENOLOGY of probation hostels. The Ombudsman produces annual reports and has carried out high-profile investigations into controversial incidents, such as the death of Harold Shipman and the disturbances at Yarlswood immigration centre. The Ombudsman’s powers are limited to making recommendations to the chief executive of NOMS and it cannot comment on any decisions made by Ministers.

Legal accountability: prison rules, prison law and the HRA

Section 47 of the Prison Act 1952 provides for the Home Secretary to make rules for the regulation and management of prisons; the resulting Prison Rules 1999 outline the procedures, policy objectives and obligations of the prison authorities. Lord Denning, in Becker v Home Office (1972), famously claimed that ‘the prison rules are regulatory directions only. Even if they are not observed, they do not give rise to a cause of action’ (cited in Scott, 2006, p. 122). This implied that prison rules did not give rights to prisoners. Recently, however, there have been movements to recognise that prison rules and also other non-statutory instruments, such as Prison Service Orders (PSOs) and Prison Service Instructions (PSIs), do, in fact, infer certain obligations onto the state and legal rights for prisoners.

While coming to such a definition is relatively straightforward, determining the content and interpretation of such rights for prisoners has proved to be much more controversial. Indeed, even the very acknowledgement

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that prisoners possess some legal rights has been highly contested. For example, up until the 1970s, prisoners were considered to possess only privileges and, once the gate closed behind them, were viewed as being beyond normal legal remedies. The policies of penal administrators were uncritically supported or condoned by a highly conservative, non-interventionist legal discourse, with a self-imposed deference to the executive. While some cases were successful, prisons were left to themselves, becoming lawless and discretionary institutions with which the use of arbitrary powers by staff could go largely unchecked. This attitude gradually began to change in the 1970s and 1980s, with a gradual shift towards the recognition that prisoners do have some legal rights. The current basis of prisoners’ residual legal rights can be found in Lord Wilberforce’s definitive statement in Raymond v Honey (1982), within which he stated that a prisoner ‘retains all civil rights which are not taken away expressly or by necessary implication’ (cited in Scott, 2006, p. 123).

Article Article Article Article Article Article Article Article Article Article Article Article Article Article Article

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First Protocol Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 Sixth Protocol Article 1 Article 2

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132 PENOLOGY On the 2 October 2000, the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998 was implemented. The HRA incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into English law. Under the HRA, all new primary legislation, and existing procedures and practices of public authorities, must be compatible with the principles of the ECHR. Despite great hopes that the HRA would lead to an expansion of prisoners’ legal rights, in the years since it was introduced and despite a handful of victories for prisoners, very little has changed. In the period both before and after the introduction of the HRA, cases have been most successful when they:

Where prisoners’ claims have failed—the most common finding—the domestic courts in both private and public law have often justified such a decision through submitting to the arguments that such a restriction is required because of necessary implications, or by showing support for the convenience of those administering imprisonment. In judgments relating to interference with Convention rights, prison authorities have maintained the courts’ sympathy in terms of their requirements for discretionary decision making, or on the basis that the restriction is necessary on grounds of prison security, order, the needs of victims of crime, the prevention of crime and even administrative convenience.

Prisoner rights jurisprudence can be developed to make a substantial impact on prisoners’ lived realities, but the domestic courts must first recognise that no human being should have to live in the appalling circ*mstances in which many prisoners find themselves today.

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Common pitfall To understand the legal rights of prisoners fully requires some understanding of the law. If you are a social science or humanities student, ensure that you get guidance from the law librarian before you start to look at recent case law.

International and regional protection: CPT, the ECHR and the UN Outside of the domestic forms of accountability, there are regional and international bodies to which prisoners can appeal to uphold legal rights, and to hold the state and its penal authorities to account. At the regional level (Europe), there are the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT); at the international level, there are various bodies that have been established by the United Nations (UN).

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Common pitfall The CPT reports are important, but you will find that they follow a very similar pattern. Report writers are heavily reliant upon ‘cut and paste’, so be selective of the reports you read.

The problems with international laws are that they are rarely used by domestic courts or prisoners in the United Kingdom, that they are focused on procedural issues and that they have set prison standards so low that it is difficult to bring a case against present conditions.

Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons have enough power to “holdDoestheHerPrison Service to account? ”

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2.10 pro b a tio n a n d c o m m u nity p e n a lti e s

Running themes

Key penologists

PROBATION AND COMMUNITY PENALTIES

Advise, assist and befriend: the history of probation The Probation Service performs a key role within the penal system. In recent times, it has become increasingly aligned with the Prison Service and both are now tied through the National Offender Management Service. Probation does, however, have a very different history to that of the prison. Probation arose in the nineteenth century, as a result of voluntary, ad hoc and informal attempts to provide support, friendship, and spiritual and practical guidance for offenders. One of the most significant forms of philanthropy came from the police court missionaries who were employed by the Church of England Temperance Society in the 1870s to help to rehabilitate alcoholics. The idea of probation for offenders was first introduced in 1877, but the most significant piece of legislation came with the Probation of Offenders Act 1907. This empowered every court to appoint at least one probation officer whose role was to ‘advise, assist and befriend’ offenders. The probation officer had a direct supervisory role, and was there to assist the offender in leading an industrious, peaceful, well-behaved and lawful life. The Criminal Justice Act 1948 led to a greater professionalisation of the Probation Service, laying down

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It is important that you examine closely the changes between the historic role of probation and its current deployment in the criminal justice system. This can also help you to track wider changes in crime control.

Corrections: the current role of the National Probation Service The Probation Service has undergone considerable changes in recent times. In April 2001, the National Probation Service of England and Wales (NPS) was launched. The NPS has 42 operational areas that are equivalent to the boundaries of the Police and Crown Prosecution Services. There has also been a considerable change in the perceived role and functions of the Probation Service. Rather than befriending offenders, today, probation officers are expected to help to assess and manage risk. The role of the NPS is to:

The work of the NPS is extensive.

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Offender management Probation officers have undertaken work in prisons since 1966, but the two ‘correctional’ services have become more closely intertwined in recent times. The momentum for recent changes has been driven by the sentencing implications of the Halliday Report (2001), the emphasis on cognitive behaviouralism in the ‘What Works’ agenda, and the belief that problems in the criminal justice system can be solved through more effective management and the introduction of competition. The end result of this is that NOMS now manages both the Prison and Probation Services, and that, through the principle of ‘contestability’, the delivery of community penalties are opened up to market testing. Following the Halliday Review, the Criminal Justice Act 2003 tied punishments served in prison and the community together, indicating that the most significant differences between prison and probation officers is now in where they perform their correctional duties, rather than in their task or work ethos.

Look at the NPS website, and read the NPS and NOMS annual report. You will also find the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO) useful.

Community penalties Non-custodial sanctions can be divided between those that require supervision and those that do not.

Examples of current penalties with no supervision include: warnings; formal cautions; conditional cautions; conditional discharge; fines; fixed penalty notices; binding over.

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140 PENOLOGY There are also community penalties that require some form of state supervision or control. These community penalties gained increasing political importance in the 1970s and 1980s, and were tied with the ideas of ‘bifurcation’—i.e. the attempt to distinguish between serious and dangerous offenders, who should be imprisoned, and lesser offenders, who should be dealt with through discharges, financial penalties and community sentences (Bottoms, 1977).

Common pitfall There have been a number of significant changes to community penalties in recent years. Always ensure that you are up to date with criminal justice terminology: look at recent legislation, and also look at an organisation’s website and recent publications to ensure that the work you cite in essays is relevant and correct.

Towards decarceration? When talking about ‘non-custodial penal sanctions’, we are referring to what is known as ‘decarceration’. The decarceration movement had considerable influence among both academia—popularised by the influential social theorist, Andrew Scull—and among penal practitioners in the 1960s and 1970s. Decarcerationists called for the closing down of asylums, prisons and reformatories, and their replacement by alternatives rooted in the community.

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Cognitive

Theoretical

Ideological

Underscored by a humanitarian ideology, the decarceration vision called for an inclusionary, rather than an exclusionary, mode of social control. But Stan Cohen (1985) identified that, even in its heyday, the decarceration movement proved to be nothing more than a smokescreen for more insidious forms of social control. In fact, in the 1970s, the original structures of social control became stronger, extending their reach, intensity and intrusion, and drawing new ‘deviants’ into the clutches of their centralised and bureaucratic penalties. The little decarceration that did take place revolved around the mentally ill. This decarceration was actually in response to fiscal pressures and the retrenchment of welfare policies, and alternatives to custody became simply add-ons to the current mechanisms of social control. Cohen points to problems around the following factors.

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Penalties in the community have become a new way of introduction into the penal system, thus expanding the ‘net’ for those at the bottom end of the system. During this time, the prison became defined more negatively—as a warehouse for incorrigibles and hard cases—but continued to expand on a new incapacitative set of logic; overall, the system enlarged itself due to the proliferation of ‘soft’ community alternatives. This principle of bifurcation and increased community interventions leads, for Cohen to yet ‘another round in the game of blaming the victim’ (1985, p. 126). From the foundation of the control system, a single principle has governed every form of classification, screening selection, diagnosis, prediction, typology and policy. This is the structural principle of binary opposition: how to sort out the good from the bad, the elect from the damned, the sheep from the goats, the amenable from the non-amenable, the treatable from the nontreatable, the good risks from the bad risks, the high prediction scorers from the low prediction scorers; how to know who belongs in the deep end, who in the shallow end, and who is hard and who is soft. (Cohen, 1985, p. 86)

You can make important connections between notions of dangerousness, the principle of bifurcation and recent debates on risk and actuarial justice.

Alternatives, then, may not used as alternatives, but may instead be about making social controls better. It is certainly understandable to be sceptical about alternatives to prison. Thomas Mathiesen (1974) argued that we should not offer a blueprint of the alternative, and should only critique and provide an alternative after the prison system has been dismantled. Mathiesen believed in alternatives, but that penal critics must be strategic to avoid state manipulation. The limitations of this position are that, if critics do not offer a plausible alternative to prison, then they are unlikely to convince the public that they are serious. There must be plausible answers and solutions to social problems, and the reconstruction

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of the possibility of a better way of dealing with conflicts than that which we currently have now. The above problems should not lead to nihilism, pessimism or the rejection of alternatives. Stan Cohen puts it best when he states: I believe that the ideology of doing good remains powerful … This is the essence of humanistic civilisation: to exert power and to do good at the same time. (1985, p. 114)

Common pitfall Criticism of the ‘alternative’ has sometimes been described as ‘left pessimism’ or ‘nihilism’. This criticism is probably unfair, because many of the critics of alternatives—such as Mathiesen and Cohen—have continued, in their work and activism, to call for humanitarian changes and a more sophisticated understanding of the positives and limitations of alternatives to custody.

What is “decarceration”? Is there evidence that the USA and the “United Kingdom adopted this policy in the 1970s? ”

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Beyond the criminal law: antisocial behaviour

complex, selfish and unacceptable activities

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(Continued)

Provisions of the Respect Action Plan

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(Continued)

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2.11 futur e dir e ctio n s a n d a lt e r n a tiv e visio n s

Running themes

Key penologists

FUTURE DIRECTIONS AND ALTERNATIVE VISIONS

Penal expansionism and ‘prison works’ Andrew Rutherford (1984) argued that ‘penal expansion’ is taking place when:

In recent times, all of these factors have been evident in penal policy in England and Wales.

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The figures in Figure 2.4 clearly indicate that the prison population in England and Wales has been rising since the 1940s. In 1940, the ADP was 9,377 prisoners; in 2007, the ADP stood at over 80,000 prisoners. In 2004, 116,000 people entered UK prisons and 186,000 people were sentenced to community punishments. Since 1974, the prison population has kept pace with rises in ‘crime’ rates and, in recent times, incarceration rates have gone well beyond the (falling) recorded ‘crime’ figures. Despite such sustained increases, there is nothing inevitable about growing prison populations. Prison populations are political choices that are made by the government, by means of the laws it introduces and the subsequent interpretation of these laws by the judiciary. Most penologists have been very concerned about the massive rise in prison populations. But some politicians—such as Michael Howard, the Conservative Home Secretary in the 1990s—and other thinkers—such as Charles Murray, a right-wing American populist thinker—have argued that prisons work and that we should send more people to prison.

Charles Murray (1997) argues that, if used sufficiently, prison can work on the grounds of deterrence and incapacitation. Murray maintains that there is a clear link between the recorded ‘crime’ rate and imprisonment rates.

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Charles Murray (1997) argues that, from 1955–93, the risk of being sent to prison was cut by 80 per cent. Contrary to expectations, prisons have actually witnessed a period of great decline, largely due to the failings of prosecutors.

Common pitfall Remember that official criminal statistics are social constructions that are there to serve the administration of the system. They are not hard or true facts that provide a comprehensive view of criminality and wrongdoing in a given society. Care should also be taken when analysing prison statistics.

Murray suggests that the United Kingdom should ‘reverse the great decline in imprisonment’ and that it should look to the USA for evidence that this can contain official ‘crime’. Murray explains how, in 1974, there were 218,205 prisoners in the USA, but that the ‘crime’ rate was out of control; the massive increase in the use of custody, containing 2 million prisoners in 2000, has held the official ‘crime’ rate in check. When translated to England and Wales, Murray argues that, to reverse the decline in prison, the average daily population must reach 275,000 (over a quarter of a million) prisoners. Then, says Murray, we must keep the prison rate high, because that is the only way in which we can contain ‘crime’ rates. But even such a massive increase in imprisonment will not

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150 PENOLOGY singularly reduce ‘crime’, because the real cause of ‘crime’ is welfare dependency. Not very many penologists take the great decline argument seriously, but its simplicity may be seductive to politicians, some members of the public and even some penology students.

Penal standstill The first alternative to penal expansionism is to attempt to keep the prison population at around its current population. In the mid–late 1980s, ‘penal standstill’ was the dominant rhetoric in official penal policy. Andrew Rutherford (1984, pp. 54–5) has identified the following aspects of penal standstill:

It is easy to confuse standstill policies with penal reductionism.

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Penal reductionism A large number of penologists have promoted ‘penal reductionism’. These range from administrative penologies, which are often philosophically close to both the standstill and reductionist models, to more socialist-inspired penologies, which advocate radical agendas that are not that dissimilar to those of penal abolitionists.

All penal reductionists share a commitment to decent prison conditions, the acknowledgement of prisoners’ procedural and due process legal rights, and consider imprisonment to be merely a suspension of offender liberties. Following the famous dictum of Sir Alexander Paterson, one of the foremost prison administrators in the early part of the twentieth century, people are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment.

Penal reductionists highlight how prison populations in England and Wales were drastically cut at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1908, the throughput for prisons was 200,000, with an ADP of 22,029. By 1918, the ADP had dropped to 9,196 and, in 1938, the ADP was 11,086, with a throughput of less than 40,000. Through the promotion of genuine alternatives—such as probation, the abolishment of imprisonment for debt and allowing time for fines to be paid by offenders— the prison population was dramatically reduced. Underscoring this change was a political commitment to reducing prison numbers. Although penal reductionists sometimes direct attention towards social problems, such as poverty or racism, reform of the criminal justice system has normally been their central focus. Penal reductionists raise concerns centring on:

Penal reductionists are often reluctant advocates of the prison, unable to conceive of responses to social harms that do not rely upon this ‘detestable solution’. Penal reductionists call for:

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Prison populations are understood as political and policy choices. The aims of penal reform are to create greater scepticism about the benefits of prison and to muster the political will to change. The limitations of penal reductionism include that it:

There are a number of different approaches to penal reductionism. Although they are all largely arguing for similar things, there are often major inconsistencies and differences between theorists and how they advocate penal reforms. A classic example is the debate between Andrew Rutherford, and Roy King and Rod Morgan. Both camps are reductionists but King and Morgan (1980) argued for the principle of normalisation—that prison life should be as normal as possible—while Rutherford (1984) is highly critical of this, arguing that prisons can never be normal places.

Penal abolitionism There are many similarities between penal reductionism and ‘penal abolitionism’. The main difference is that abolitionists have questioned the role and function of the prison in advanced capitalist societies, and the actual necessity of human suffering through incarceration. Rene van Swaaningen argues that: at its core, criminal law … is based on … repressive assumptions … From the beginning it has been seen to create problems instead of solving them. A penal reaction after the fact is not preventive but de-socialises an ever-increasing number of people. Therefore it would be better to abolish penal means of coercion, and to replace them by more reparative means. This briefly is the abolitionist message. (1986, p. 9)

FUTURE DIRECTIONS AND ALTERNATIVE VISIONS

Abolitionists have been concerned with both the micro-realities of imprisonment, such as the lived experiences of prisoners, the inherent brutalities and dehumanisation of prison life, and the unfettered discretion of prison officers. Alongside this is a concern with the broader macro socio-economic contexts through which social harms are both understood and defined as ‘crime’, and which legitimises the current focus on, and indeed existence of, the process of penalisation. Penal abolitionism has been criticised on the following grounds.

In fact, penal abolitionism does none of the above. Abolitionists generally promote responsible, relevant and realistic accounts of the penal system.

R esponsibility A responsible approach to wrongdoing must ask the following questions:

Penal abolitionists can be seen to pursue the following goals in relation to as a responsible response to social harms.

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R elevance A relevant approach to penal policy today would ask:

To this end, the following are critical factors.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS AND ALTERNATIVE VISIONS

R e alism A realistic approach to dealing with social problems would ask:

The penal abolitionist responds with the following.

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It is important that you consider all of the perspectives surrounding prisons and punishment. It is easy to construct a ‘straw man’, by failing to include all of the arguments surrounding a particular position, and then tear it down in what appears to be a compelling way—but penologists and practitioners will neither believe nor advocate positions that do not have some form of intellectual coherence. All published works should be taken on their merits. You should allow your imagination to take hold and try to think like a penologist. Look at prisons, from the perspective of right-wing, liberal and abolitionist standpoints: all three have their strengths and weaknesses, and you should explore them thoroughly.

Thinking critically about penal legitimacy The claims of penal authorities to legitimacy are predicated upon the current distribution and application of punishment, and upon successfully attaining political validity and a sense of moral rightfulness in a given society, and lead to acquiescence, obedience and consent from both those imprisoned and from the general public. Failure to attain such moral or political validity can be assessed in two ways: as creating a legitimacy ‘deficit’ or as leading to a ‘crisis’ of penal legitimacy.

A prison service can be considered as suffering from a legitimacy deficit when the absence of legitimacy is believed to derive from weak justifications for its current aims, objectives and or stated purposes, if it appears to be inadequate in terms of fulfilling its desired goals and stated intentions, or if the authority of those who apply penal power is significantly undermined.

The current appliance of the power to punish can be considered to be illegitimate when it is claimed to create too many inherent infringements of human rights, when dehumanising penal regimes and brutalisation are considered to be endemic to operational practice, when it

FUTURE DIRECTIONS AND ALTERNATIVE VISIONS

inevitably exceeds certain tolerable pain thresholds, or when it is believed to be entirely misapplied or that it inappropriately punishes certain categories of harm or wrongdoers. There are subsequently two dimensions to this ‘crisis of penal legitimacy’ (Fitzgerald and Sim, 1982):

Fitzgerald and Sim provide a classic statement of the crisis of political legitimacy: the sanction of imprisonment is invoked consistently against marginal, lower class offenders. In so doing, imprisonment serves a class-based legal system, which first, defines the social harm which are signalled out for punishment, and second, invokes different types of sanctions for different categories of social harm. (1982, p. 24)

For abolitionists such as Joe Sim, imprisonment cannot be understood outside of social context—i.e. the social divisions and structural inequities of society around racism, sexism and poverty. Because we lock up the poor, the vulnerable and the powerless, rather than the most dangerous, prisons do not do what they claim to do. In this sense, they are politically illegitimate. The moral legitimacy of imprisonment has also been questioned. For Barbara Hudson and a number of abolitionists from Continental Europe, imprisonment must be understood within the wider debates on punishment (the intentional imposition of suffering). The very deployment of the punitive rationale and punishment itself, rather than the liberal reductionist concerns with prison conditions or standards, become the central focus of a moral critique. For many abolitionists, the deliberate infliction of pain is inherently morally problematic and so the penal system also faces a crisis of moral legitimacy. The term ‘neo-abolitionism’ was first introduced by Dutch abolitionist Rene van Swaaningen. Some neo-abolitionists (Scott, 2006) argue that prisons are profoundly immoral and represent the negation of humanity, on the bases that:

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158 PENOLOGY The prison is an inherently harm-creating environment that has direct implications for the health of those confined. For anti-prison critics, penal institutions are detestable solutions that we can live without—and this implies their deligitimation. Neo-abolitionists point to the crises of both moral and political legitimacy.

Radical alternatives Radical alternatives to prison have taken three forms, as follows.

Are abolitionist perspectives plausible in a time of penal “expansionism? ”

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Prisons and their Moral Performance Imprisoned by Our Prisons Doing Time The Future of the Prison Prisons and the Process of Justice The Penal System

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3.1 h ow to g e t th e m o st o ut of yo ur l e ctur e s a n d s e min a rs

It is the responsibility of your tutors to provide module booklets detailing lecture topics, seminar questions and recommended readings. It is a good idea to become familiar with your module outlines as soon as possible. Before you go into each lecture, you should briefly remind yourself of where it fits into the overall scheme of things.

It is a good idea to purchase the main recommended textbooks before the start of the module. If you act early, and read through the lecture and seminar programme, you may be able to pick up further supplementary texts second-hand from the university bookshop.

Use of lecture notes It is always beneficial to do some preliminary reading before you enter a lecture. If lecture notes are provided in advance (e.g. electronically), then read these over and bring them with you to the lecture. Some lecturers prefer to provide full notes; some prefer to make skeletal outlines available; and some prefer not to issue notes at all. If notes are provided, take full advantage and supplement these with your own notes as you listen. Some basic preparation will equip you with a great advantage: you will be able to ‘tune in’ and think more clearly about the lecture than you would have been able to had you not undertaken the preliminary work.

HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR LECTURES AND SEMINARS

Keep it simple and set modest reading targets. You are more likely to maintain seminar and lecture readings every week if you set yourself only a small number for each module.

Mastering technical terms New words can be threatening, especially if you have to face a string of them in one lecture. Uncertainty about new terms may impair your ability to benefit fully from the lecture and may therefore hinder the quality of your learning. Some subjects require technical terms and the use of them is unavoidable—but when you have heard a term a number of times, it will not seem as daunting as it did initially. Checklist for mastering terms used in your lectures ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Your confidence will greatly increase when you begin to follow the flow of arguments that contain technical terms, especially when you can freely use the terms yourself, both in speaking and writing.

Developing independent study Lectures are signposts for further reading. The issues raised in your lectures are designed to help you and to inspire you to undertake deeper independent study. Your aim should invariably be to build on what you are given and you should never merely return the bare bones of the lecture material in a piece of coursework or in an exam.

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It is always very refreshing for a lecturer or examiner to receive assignments or exam answers that contain references to recent studies that he or she has not highlighted in a related lecture or has not previously encountered.

Note-taking strategy Note taking in lectures is an art that you will only perfect with practice, and by trial and error. The problem will always be to try to find a balance between concentrating on what you hear, and making sufficient notes that will enable you later to remember and reflect on what you have heard. You should not, however, become frustrated by the fact that you will not immediately understand or remember everything that you have heard.

By being present at a lecture and by making some attempt to make notes on what you hear, you will already have a substantial advantage over those students who do not even attend.

G uidelines for note taking in lectures To develop a note-taking strategy that works best for you, work at finding a balance between listening and writing. This may entail listing a few key words to summarise the issues discussed in the lecture. Do, however, remember the following points.

Developing the lecture Lectures are sometimes criticised as a form of ‘passive learning’. Some lecturers, however, make their lectures more interactive, by using

HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR LECTURES AND SEMINARS

interactive handouts or by posing questions during the lecture and giving students time out to reflect on these. As a student, you can also make the lecture more interactive in the following ways. ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! !

Seminars should not be underestimated Seminars are often optional in a degree programme and are sometimes poorly attended, because they are underestimated. But seminars have a unique contribution to learning that will complement lectures. Seminars can: ! ! ! ! ! !

Strategies for benefiting from your seminar experience There are a number of ways in which you can benefit from seminars. ! ! !

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If you are required to give a presentation as part of your seminar, the following points will be helpful.

3.2 writin g a dis s e rt a tio n

WRITING A DISSERTATION

The research process A dissertation is an independent piece of work that you will be expected to do, probably in the third year of your undergraduate degree or towards the end of a taught postgraduate degree. The length of your dissertation can range from 8,000 to 20,000 words. If you are doing a research degree, the word length will be even longer. Undergraduate dissertations are normally 10,000 words. Although this may sound a lot at the start, by the time at which you come to submit your dissertation, you will probably wish it could be much longer. The art of writing a dissertation is to keep to the word limit and to cover the issues that need to be incorporated into your work. This is often the hardest part, and so it is important that you give the topic, focus, structure and availability of literature a great deal of thought. It will be down to you to identify the focus of your studies, to set deadlines, to arrange supervision times, to organise chapter structures and to undertake a literature review

It is important, in a large project (such as a dissertation), that you choose a topic for which you can maintain your motivation, momentum and enthusiasm.

Preparation and focus It is sensible, if you are doing a dissertation on prisons or punishment, that you have undertaken the relevant modules. This will give you an overview of the general literature, help you to focus on one specific area and assist with your background reading. You will need to convince your supervisor that there is enough material easily available for you to undertake the project. Always start with the most broad and straightforward books, and then work your way into the specialist area.

Time is also very important. If you are an undergraduate student, you should start thinking about your dissertation in your second year; as a postgraduate on a taught course, it is worthwhile thinking about your dissertation as soon as you start your course.

Undergraduate students should probably undertake literature reviews rather than empirical research. This is because doing empirical work well is quite difficult, and there are also clear ethical issues that need to be addressed in the design and application of the dissertation. If you are a

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168 PENOLOGY postgraduate students you may consider doing empirical research, especially if you have had research training or have developed transferable skills through your work. Focus is all-important. You should ask yourself what exactly you want to examine in your dissertation: a common mistake is to try to do too much. This is natural and you will probably find that, as you progress with your project, you will refine the topic to a much smaller issue, or group of issues. Once you have established a clear focus, a good structure is the key to success.

Chapter structure Once you have some idea which aspect of penology you wish to investigate and have decided on a central question or focus, you need to think about chapter structure. This may involve some background reading into how best to write and present your dissertation. It is always important that you speak to your supervisor about chapter structure, but a penology dissertation might be organised in the following way, with proportionate word counts:

WRITING A DISSERTATION

When working out your chapter structure, you should be looking to provide a platform for the central focus of the dissertation. Chapters should be building blocks that are leading the reader towards a case study or empirical evidence.

In many dissertations, your evaluation and conclusion can be combined into one chapter. This will allow you a greater percentage of the word count in the preceding chapters. If you are doing empirical research instead of a literature review, you will need to provide a methodology chapter. Every dissertation is different, so you may wish to deviate from this structure in a number of ways. Your supervisor will be well placed to help you to organise your chapters and to help you to focus on your dissertation topic.

Example question and research focus: ‘How many people die in custody, who is to blame, and who is held to account?’ Introduction

Chapter 1

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(Continued) Chapter 2 Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5 Conclusion

Supervision Supervision is very important. Supervisors provide intellectual support, but can also help you with basic referencing and layout tips. In addition, the research process is rather lonely and your supervisor should share an interest in the topic you are studying, therefore providing support. In the first or second meeting with your supervisor, you should be able to offer:

Do not be afraid to ask or approach a potential supervisor in the first instance—you want to be supervised by somebody who is an expert in the area and who can help you with your focus and structure.

It is the responsibility of the supervisor to ensure that he or she is available to see you over the year, but it is down to you to make sure that you use that time constructively. This means having something new for your supervisor to read and also giving him or her plenty of time to read drafts before meetings. Emailing chapters an hour before a supervisory

WRITING A DISSERTATION

meeting is unlikely to leave your supervisor in the most favourable of moods!

You should also find out how many hours you are expected to spend with your supervisor. Many universities recommend 6 hours over the course of the year as a guide. This would mean seeing your supervisor for a 30-minute meeting every two weeks over semesters one and two.

From first thoughts to final draft Motivation is very important when undertaking research. You must be interested in the topic and prepared to work hard. A well-organised dissertation should be fun to do and should allow you to gather specialist knowledge in penology. Completing the first draft of the dissertation is the hardest part. You should always try to finish your dissertation with a few weeks to spare. This will allow you to proofread your dissertation and spot any small mistakes or contradictory arguments. When reading a dissertation, you should initially focus on the content, rather than on sentence structure or referencing problems. Everything takes longer than you think: you may expect to finish a chapter in a couple of weeks, but it will probably take twice as long. When writing, remember that you should write as an academic, and that you must be able to explain and apply all of the concepts that you use. Name dropping may be useful in exams, but will not help you much with your dissertation. Write in a clear and understandable way and explain what you mean. Do not take the reader’s knowledge for granted. You are being tested on what you know and how you came to these conclusions, rather than on the fact that you have picked up a couple of key words or concepts.

The hard work will pay off: rewrites, especially if you follow the guidance of your dissertation supervisor, will lead to better marks. Remember that your supervisor is also likely to be one of your markers.

Checklist for your dissertation ! !

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3.3 e s s a y-writin g hints

Getting into the flow When writing an essay (or dissertation chapter), one of your first aims should be to get your mind active and engaged with your subject. It is a good idea to ‘warm up’ for your essay by jotting down key themes and ideas before you begin to write. This will allow you to think within the framework of your topic and will be especially important if you are coming to the subject for the first time.

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The ‘tributary’ principle A ‘tributary’ is a stream that runs into a main river as it wends its way to the sea. Similarly, in an essay, you should ensure that every idea you introduce is moving towards the overall theme you are addressing. Your idea might, of course, be relevant to a subheading that is, in turn, relevant to a main heading. Every idea you introduce is to be a ‘feeder’ into the flowing theme. In addition to tributaries, there can also be ‘distributaries’, which are streams that flow away from the river. In an essay, these would represent the ideas that run away from the main stream of thought and leave the reader trying to work out what their relevance may have been. It is one thing to have grasped your subject thoroughly, but quite another to convince your reader that this is the case. Your aim should be to build up ideas sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, until you have communicated your clear purpose to the reader. It is important, in essay writing, that you do not include irrelevant material and that you stay focused on the essay question. You can make linking statements that show a wider understanding of the issues, but you must ensure that you explain how they contribute to your answer and why you consider them to be relevant.

Listing and linking the key concepts All subjects will have central concepts that can sometimes be usefully labelled by a single word. Course textbooks may include a glossary of terms and these provide a direct route to the beginning of efficient mastery of the topic. The central words or terms are the essential raw materials upon which you will need to build. Ensure that you learn the words and their definitions, and that you can go on to link the key words together so that, in your learning activities, you will add understanding to your basic memory work.

You might decide to draft your outline points in the manner shown in Figure 3.1 (or you may prefer to use a mind map approach).

174 PENOLOGY P enal accountability

Financial

Legal

International

Domestic

Audits

Prison law

United N ations

Independent monitoring boards

Accounts

Prison rules

C ommitte e for the Prevention of Torture

Prison and Probation O mbudsman

Managerialism

Human Rights Act

E urope an C ourt of Human Rights

C hief Inspector of Prisons

Addressing penal controversies In higher education, students are required to make the transition from descriptive to critical writing. You should imagine the critical approach to be like a law case that is being conducted, in which there is both a prosecution and a defence. Your concern should be for objectivity, transparency and fairness. No matter how passionately you may feel about a given cause, you must not allow information to be filtered out because of your personal prejudice. An essay is not to become a crusade for a cause in which the contrary arguments are not addressed in an even-handed manner. This means that you should show awareness that opposite views are held and these should be represented as accurately as possible. The above points do not, of course, mean that you are not entitled to a personal persuasion, or to feel passionately about your subject. On the contrary, such feelings may well be a marked advantage if you can bring them under control and channel them into balanced, effective writing.

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Structuring an outline Whenever you sense a flow of inspiration to write on a given subject, it is essential that you put this into a structure that will allow your inspiration to be communicated clearly. It is a basic principle in all walks of life that structure and order facilitate good communication. Therefore, when you have the flow of inspiration in your essay, you must structure this in a way that will allow the marker to recognise the true quality of your work. For example, you might plan for an ‘Introduction’, a ‘Conclusion’ and three main sections, each with several subheadings (see example below). Moreover, you may decide not to include your headings in your final presentation—i.e. you may use them only initially to structure and balance your arguments. Once you have drafted this outline, you can then easily sketch an ‘Introduction’ and you will have been well prepared for the ‘Conclusion’ when you arrive at that point.

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A good structure will help you to balance the weight of each of your arguments against the others and to arrange your points in the order that will best facilitate the fluent progression of your argument.

Identifying key questions When you are constructing a draft outline for an essay or project, you should ask what are the major questions that you wish to address. It is useful to make a list of all of the issues that you might wish to tackle that spring to mind. The ability to design a good question is an art form that

ESSAY-WRITING HINTS 177

should be cultivated and such questions will allow you to impress your assessor with the quality of your thinking. To illustrate the point, consider the example presented below. If you were asked to write an essay about the real levels of violence in prison, you might, as your starting point, pose the following questions.

Rest your case It should be your aim to give the clear impression that your arguments are not based entirely on hunches, bias, feelings or intuition. In exams and essay questions, it is usually assumed (even if not directly specified) that you will appeal to evidence to support your claims. Therefore, when you write your essay or dissertation, you should ensure that it is liberally sprinkled with citations and evidence. By the time the assessor reaches the end of your work, he or she should be convinced that your conclusions are evidence-based. A fatal flaw would be to make claims for which you have provided no authoritative source.

Give the clear impression that what you have asserted is derived from recognised sources and is up to date. It also looks impressive if you spread your citations across your essay, rather than compressing them into a paragraph or two at the beginning and end.

178 PENOLOGY Some examples of how you might introduce your evidence and sources are as follows.

Careful use of quotations Although it is desirable to present a good range of cited sources, it is not judicious to present these as ‘patchwork quilt’—i.e. you should not simply paste together what others have said, with little thought for interpretative comment or coherent structure. It is a good general point to aim to avoid very lengthy extracts: short ones can be very effective. Aim to blend the quotations as naturally as possible into the flow of your sentences. Also, it is good to vary your practices: sometimes, you might use short, direct, brief quotations (citing page number, as well as author and year); at other times, you can summarise the gist of a quotation in your own words. In this latter case, you should cite the author’s name and year of publication, but leave out quotation marks and page number.

A good guide for deciding whether to include a quotation is to consider if its author is a great authority in the field and so adds weight to your argument, or if you find the prose so beautifully or powerfully written that you could not hope to put it better yourself.

In terms of referencing, practice may vary from one discipline to the next, but some general points that will go a long way in contributing to good practice are:

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A clearly defined ‘Introduction’ In an ‘Introduction’ to an essay, you have the opportunity to define the problem or issue that is being addressed and to set it within context. Resist the temptation to elaborate on any issue at the introductory stage. The introduction should provide little tasters of what will follow, in order to whet the reader’s appetite and to mark out the boundaries of your discussion.

If you leave the introduction and definition of your problem until the end of your writing, you will be better placed to map out the directions taken.

The ‘Conclusion’: adding the finishing touches In the ‘Conclusion’, you should aim to tie your essay together in a clear and coherent manner. It is your last chance to leave an overall impression in your reader’s mind. Therefore, you will, at this stage, want to do justice to your efforts and not sell yourself short. This is your opportunity to identify what the strongest evidence points or where the balance of probability lies. The conclusion to an exam question often has to be written hurriedly under the pressure of time, but, with an essay or dissertation, you have time to reflect on, refine and adjust the content to your satisfaction. It should be your goal to make the conclusion a smooth finish that does justice to your range of content in summary and succinct form. Do not underestimate the value of an effective conclusion. ‘Sign off’ your essay in a manner that brings closure to the treatment of your subject.

Top-down and bottom-up clarity An essay gives you the opportunity to refine each sentence and paragraph, remembering the ‘tributary’ principle. From a ‘top-down’ perspective—i.e. that of starting at the top with your major outline points—clarity is facilitated by the structure drafted in your outline. You can ensure that the subheadings are appropriately placed under the most relevant main heading, and that both subheadings and main headings are arranged in logical sequence. From a ‘bottom-up’ perspective— i.e. that of building up the details that ‘flesh out’ your main points—you

180 PENOLOGY should check that each sentence is a ‘feeder’ for the predominant concept in a given paragraph. When all of this is done, you can check that the transition from one point to the next is smooth, rather than abrupt. Checklist: summary for essay writing ! ! !

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3.4 r e visio n hints

Strategy for revision should be on your mind from your very first lecture at the beginning of your academic semester. You should be like the squirrel that stores up nuts for the winter: do not waste any lecture, tutorial, seminar, group discussion, etc. by letting the material evaporate into thin air; get into the habit of making a few guidelines for revision

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after each learning activity. Keep a folder, file or small notebook that is reserved for revision and write out the major points that you have learned from each session. By establishing this regular practice, you will find that what you have learned becomes consolidated in your mind, and that this enables you to ‘import’ and ‘export’ your material both within and across subjects.

If you do this regularly and do not make the task too tedious, you will be amazed at how much useful summary material you have accumulated when it comes to revision time.

Compile summary notes It would be useful and convenient to have a small notebook or cards on which you can write outline summaries that provide you with an overview of your subject at a glance. You might also use treasury tags to hold different batches of cards together, while still allowing for inserts and resorting. Such practical resources can easily be slipped into your pocket or bag and produced when you are on the bus or train, or while you are sitting in a traffic jam. A glance over your notes will consolidate your learning and will also encourage you to think further about your subject. It is also useful to make a note of questions that you would like to explore in greater depth at a later time.

There is a part of the mind that will continue to work on problems when you have moved on to focus on other issues. Therefore, if you feed on useful, targeted information, your mind will continue to work on ‘automatic pilot’ after you have ‘switched off’.

Keep organised records People who have a fulfilled career have usually developed the twin skills of time and task management. It is worth pausing to remember that you can use your academic training to prepare for your future career in this respect. You should ensure that you do not fall short of your potential simply because these qualities have not been cultivated. One important tactic is to keep a folder for each subject and to divide this topic by topic, keeping your topics in the same order in which they are presented in your course lectures. Bind them together using subject

182 PENOLOGY dividers to separate the topics. At the front of the folder, compile an index of the contents, listing each topic clearly as a way of identifying each new section. Another important practice is to place all of your notes on a given topic within the appropriate section—and not to put off this simple task, but to do it straight away. Notes may come from lectures, seminars, tutorials, Internet searches, personal notes, etc. It is also essential that, when you remove these for consultation, you return them to their ‘home’ immediately after use.

Academic success has as much to do with good organisation and planning as it has to do with ability. The value of the quality material you have accumulated on your academic programme may be diminished if you have not organised it into an easily retrievable form.

Use past papers Revision will be very limited if it is confined to memory work. While you should read over your revision cards or notebook and keep a picture of the major facts in your mind’s eye, it is also essential that you become familiar with previous exam papers to give you some idea of how the questions are likely to be framed. You can build up a good range of past exam papers (especially recent ones) and add these to your folder.

Employ effective memory aids You should try to use devices that will help you to recall information that might otherwise be difficult to retrieve from memory. ‘Visualisation’ is one technique that can be used to aid memory: for example, the ‘location method’ involves you visualising a familiar journey and ‘placing’ the facts that you wish to remember at various landmarks along the journey—e.g. a bus stop, a car park, a shop, a store, a bend, a police station, a traffic light, etc. This has the advantage of associating the information that you have to learn with other material that is already firmly embedded and structured in your memory. Therefore, once the relevant memory is activated, a dynamic ‘domino effect’ will be triggered. There is, however, no reason why you cannot use a whole toolkit of memory aids.

REVISION HINTS 183

Alliteration’s artful aid peg’ system Acronyms

Mind maps ‘Rhymes and chimes’

Alternate between methods It is not enough, however, merely to present a list of outline points in response to an exam question (although it is better to do this than to do nothing if you have run out of time in your exam). Your aim should be to put ‘meat on the bones’, adding substance, evidence and arguments to your basic points. You should work at finding the balance between the two methods—outline revision cards might be best reserved for short bus journeys, whereas extended reading might be better employed for longer revision slots at home or in the library. Your ultimate goal should be to bring together an effective working approach that will enable you to face your exam questions comprehensively and confidently.

Revise with others If you can find a few other students with whom to revise, this will provide another fresh approach to the last stages of your learning. First, ensure that others carry their own workloads and that they are not merely using the hard work of others as a short cut to success. You should think of group sessions as one of the strings on your violin, but

184 PENOLOGY not the only string. This collective approach will allow you to assess your strengths and weaknesses (showing you where you are offtrack), and to benefit from the resources and insights of others. Before you meet up, you can each design some questions for the whole group to address. The group might also go through past exam papers and discuss the points that might provide an effective response to each question— but it should not be the aim of the group to provide standard and identical answers that each group member can mimic. Group work is currently deemed to be advantageous by educationalists, and teamwork is held to be a desirable employability quality. Checklist: good study habits for revision time !

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3.5 e x a m hints

EXAM HINTS 185

Handling your nerves Exam nerves are not unusual: it has been concluded that test anxiety arises because of the perception that your performance is being evaluated, that the consequences are likely to be serious and that you are working under the pressure of a time restriction. If you focus on the task at hand, rather than on feeding a downward negative spiral in your thinking patterns, it will help you to keep your nerves under control. In the run-up to your exams, you can practise some simple relaxation techniques that will help you to bring stress under control. It is a very good thing if you can interpret your nervous reactions positively—being nervous shows that you care—but the symptoms are more likely to be problematic if you interpret them negatively, pay too much attention to them or allow them to interfere with your exam preparation or performance.

Practices that may help to reduce or buffer the effects of exam stress include:

The best choice is going to be the one (or combination) of these that works best for you—and this may be discovered by trial and error. Some

186 PENOLOGY of the above techniques can be practised on the morning of the exam and even the memory of them can be used just before the exam. For example, you might run over a relaxing tune in your head and have this echo inside you as you enter the exam room. The idea behind all this is that, first, stress levels will be reduced and, second, relaxing thoughts will serve to displace stressful reactions. It has been said that stress is the body’s call to take action, but anxiety is a maladaptive response to that call.

Time management The all-important matter as you approach an exam is to develop the belief that you can take control of the situation. As you work through the list of issues that need to be addressed, you will be able to tick them off one by one. One of the issues about which you will need to be clear before the exam is the length of time that you should allocate to each question. Sometimes, this can be quite simple (although it is always necessary to read the rubric carefully)—for example, if two questions are to be answered in a two-hour paper, you should allow one hour for each question. If it is a two-hour paper with one essay question and five shorter answers, you might allow one hour for the essay and 12 minutes each for the shorter questions—but you must check the weighting for the marks on each question, and you will also need to deduct whatever time it takes you to read over the paper and to choose your questions. More importantly, give yourself some practice on papers similar to those you are likely to face (i.e. past papers).

Remember to check if the structure of your exam paper is the same as that of previous years’ papers and do not forget that excessive time on your ‘strongest’ question may not compensate for very poor answers to other questions. Also ensure that you read the rubric carefully in the exam.

Task management After you have decided on the questions that you wish to address, you need to plan your answers. Some students prefer to plan all outlines and draft work at the beginning, while other prefer to plan and address one answer before proceeding to address the next question.

EXAM HINTS 187

The exam is like conducting an argument, but one in which you have the opportunity to get your views across without interruption.

Decide on your strategy before you enter the exam room and stick to your plan. When you have completed your draft outline as rough work, you should allocate an appropriate time for each section. This will prevent you from treating of some aspects excessively, while falling short on others. Such careful planning will help you to achieve balance, fluency and symmetry.

Remaining aware of time limitations will help you to write succinctly and stay focused on the task, while preventing you from dressing up your responses with unnecessary padding.

Attend to practical details This short section is designed to remind you of the practical details that should be attended to in preparation for an exam. There are always students who turn up late, go to the wrong venue, arrive for the wrong exam, or do not turn up at all! Check and recheck that you have all of the details of each exam correctly noted. What you do not need is to arrive late and then have to calm your panic reactions. The exam season is the time when you should aim to be at your best. Checklist: practical exam details ! ! ! ! !

The art of ‘name dropping’ When studying penology at university, you will be required to cite studies as evidence for your arguments and link these to the names of

188 PENOLOGY researchers, scholars or theorists. It will help if you can use the correct dates, or at least the decades. It will also help if you can demonstrate that you have used contemporary sources and have done some independent work. A marker will have dozens, if not hundreds, of scripts to work through and he or she will know if you are just repeating the same phrases from the same sources as everyone else. There is inevitably a certain amount of this that must go on, but there is room for you to add fresh and original touches that demonstrate your independence and sociological imagination.

Give the clear impression that you have done more than the bare minimum and that you have enthusiasm for the subject.

A politician’s answer Politicians are renowned for refusing to answer questions directly or for evading them through raising other questions. A humorous example is that of a politician being asked: ‘Is it true that you always answer questions by asking another?’ To this, the politician replied: ‘Who told you that?’ The point here is that, in an exam, you must make sure that you answer the set question, although there may be other questions that arise out of this that you might want to highlight in your conclusion. As a first principle, you must answer the set question and not try to another that you had hoped to see answer.

EXAM HINTS 189

Although some of the points listed in the second column may be relevant overall, they are not as directly relevant to the given question. Ensure that you focus on the actual question.

Missing your question Students have often been heard, after an exam, to complain bitterly that the topic they had revised so thoroughly had not been tested in the exam. The first response is, of course, that students should always cover enough topics to avoid selling themselves short in the exam—the habit of ‘question spotting’ across past papers is always a risky game to play. The reality may be, however, that the question for which the student was looking may have been there, but that the student may simply not have seen it. He or she may have expected the question to be couched in certain words and have not been able to find these when scanning the questions in blind panic. The simple lesson, then, is that you should always read over the exam paper carefully, slowly and thoughtfully— and that this is a practice that will be time well spent.

Write it down If you write down the question that you have chosen to address and, perhaps, quietly mouth it to yourself, you are more likely to process fully its true meaning and intent. Think of how easy it is to misunderstand a question that has been put to you verbally, because you have misinterpreted the tone or emphasis.

Pursue a critical approach In degree courses, you are usually expected to write critically rather than merely descriptively, although it may be necessary to use some minimal

190 PENOLOGY descriptive substance as the raw material for your debate. Given that most questions require some form of critical evaluation of the evidence, you will need to address issues one by one from different standpoints. What you should not do, however, is digress into a tangent about irrelevant and abstract information.

Analyse the parts A good essay cannot be constructed without reference to its parts. Furthermore, the parts will arise as you break the question down into the components that it suggests to you. Although the breaking down of a question into components is not sufficient for an excellent essay, it is a necessary starting point.

This is a straightforward question in that you have two major sections: advantages and disadvantages. You are left with the choice of the issues that you wish to address and you can arrange these in the order you prefer. Your aim should be to ensure that you do not have a lopsided view of this, even if you feel quite strongly one way or the other.

In this case, you might want to consider the role of governments, the church, schools, parents and the media. You will, however, need to provide some reference points to the past, because you are being asked to address the issue of change. There will also be scope to look at where the strongest influences for change arise and where the strongest resistance comes from. You might argue that the changes have been either dramatic or evolutionary.

When asked to ‘discuss’ Students often ask how much of their own opinion they should include in an essay. In a ‘discussion’, when you raise one issue, another one

EXAM HINTS 191

might arise out of it. Many tutors have introduced their lectures by saying that they are going to ‘unpack’ the arguments. When you unpack an object (such as a new desk that has to be assembled), you first remove the overall packaging, such as a large box, and then proceed to remove the covers from all the component parts. After that, you attempt to assemble all of the parts, according to the given design, so that they hold together in the intended manner. In a discussion, your aim should be not only to identify and define all of the parts that contribute, but also to show where they fit (or do not fit) into the overall picture. Checklist: features of a response to a ‘discuss’ question ! !

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If a ‘critique’ is requested One example that might help to clarify what is involved in a ‘critique’ is the hotly debated topic of the physical punishment of children. It would be important, in the interest of balance and fairness, to present all sides and shades of the argument. You would then look at whether there is available evidence to support each argument, and you might introduce issues that have been coloured by prejudice, tradition, religion and legislation. You would aim to identify those arguments that are based on emotion and intuition, and to get down to those arguments that really have solid evidence-based support. Finally, you would need to flag up where the strongest evidence appears to lie and also to identify issues that appear to be inconclusive. It would be expected that you should, if possible, arrive at some certainties.

If asked to ‘compare and contrast’ When asked to ‘compare and contrast’, you should be thinking in terms of similarities and differences. You should ask what the two issues share in common and what features of each are distinct.

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When asked to ‘evaluate’ When thinking about how to approach a question that asks you to ‘evaluate’ a theory or concept in penology, you should consider:

It should be noted that the words presented in the above examples might not always be the exact words that will appear on your exam script—you might, for example, find ‘analyse’, ‘outline’, or ‘investigate’, etc.—but the best advice is to check over past exam papers and to familiarise yourself with the words that are most recurrent.

p a rt fo ur a d ditio n a l r e s o urc e s

194 PENOLOGY

glo s s a r y

Abolitionism

A theoretical and political perspective holding that the penal system creates, rather than provides solutions to, social problems. Abolitionists call for new understandings of the social harms that we face and for radical alternatives to current ways of responding to wrongdoing.

Actuarialism

An insurance technique that can be deployed to manage ‘crime’ by analysing the distribution of risk within aggregate populations.

Administrative penology

A way of theorising and analysing punishments intimately associated with, and often funded by, the government.

Authoritarian populism

An explanation of how punitive and repressive laws can gain widespread consent among the public.

Bifurcation

The attempt to reserve imprisonment for serious and dangerous offenders, while at the same time giving low-risk offenders community penalties.

Bloody Code

How capital punishments were deployed in eighteenth-century England as a means of exercising ideological control.

Carceral society

The argument made by Michel Foucault (French philosopher) that changes in

GLOSSARY

the penal system in the nineteenth century were not inspired by humanitarian benevolence, but rather by the deepening and expansion of disciplinary power. Causation

The assertion that one event or set of circ*mstances inevitably cause(s) another event or set of circ*mstances to occur.

Civilisation

The advancement of society to a higher level of moral, cultural and social values. Emile Durkheim and penologists following in the tradition of Norbert Elias have applied the civilisation process to forms of punishment.

Community penalties

Non-custodial penal sanctions.

Comparative analysis

The selection and study of two or more cases to highlight similarities and differences. This can involve comparing penal systems and forms of punishment in different countries.

Contestability

The opening up of the provision of rehabilitation for offenders to contest from both the public and private sectors.

Correlation

When two or more phenomena occur at the same time, but are not necessarily linked.

‘Crime’

The term applied to refer to certain social harms, illegalities and forms of wrongdoing. A ‘crime’ is a social construction that is shaped by specific legal, historical and spatial contexts. The constitution of what a ‘crime’ entails is essentially contested, and depends on the theoretical and political position of the definer.

195

196 PENOLOGY Criminalisation

The application of the ‘criminal’ label.

Criminal justice system

The collective name given to state agencies that respond to illegal behaviours. These include the police, the courts, and probation and prison services.

Crisis

A term indicating that, if action is not taken soon to address current problems and difficulties, a breakdown or disaster will occur.

Culture

The norms and values of a given society or institution.

Dangerousness

A social and historical construction that has referred to a number of different groups of offenders. Today, it generally refers to violent, sexual and persistent property offenders.

Dark figure

The very large amount of ‘crime’ and harm in society that is not covered in official statistics.

Decarceration

Moving away from imprisonment as the central penal sanction.

Decency

A humanitarian ethos to prison work introduced by former Director General Martin Narey. This is a vague concept that implies treating prisoners as fellow human beings, developing relationships with prisoners, ensuring that prisoners receive their lawful entitlements, and a commitment to reducing racism, self-inflicted deaths and prison officer brutality.

Dehumanisation

A process under which the basic prerequisites of human life are undermined and deliberately removed, resulting in alienation and profound human suffering.

GLOSSARY

Democracy

The unhindered participation of all people in processes of shared decision making. In a democracy, all human voices are deemed valid and of equal worth in the creation of social norms.

Denunciation

When a ‘crime’, social harm, or wrong is symbolically denounced, often through punishment.

Deterrence

The philosophical justification of punishment that looks to deter individuals or wider members of society from future lawbreaking through efficient and effective penal sanctions.

Deviance

Social behaviour that deviates from the dominant cultural norms and values.

Enlightenment

The philosophical movement maintaining that man and woman can use human reason and rational thought to explain social phenomena.

False negatives

Linked to the philosophical justification of incapacitation. This arises when an offender is predicted not to reoffend, but does so.

False positives

When an offender is predicted to reoffend, but does not do so. This is difficult to assess because the offender has been incapacitated.

Feminism

A sociological, philosophical and political tradition that calls for the fair and equitable treatment of women. There are a number of feminist perspectives, including liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, radical feminism, Black feminism, postmodern feminism and socialist feminism.

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198 PENOLOGY Functionalism

When a given social institution, such as prison, is defined as meeting certain prerequisite needs for society to successfully function. This ‘functional fit’ does not necessarily have to correspond with the official aims of the given institution. Marxist and Foucauldian theories are sometimes referred to as ‘left functionalism’, because they highlight the way in which prisons function in the interests of the powerful.

Globalisation

The increasing hom*ogeneity of global economies, and its implications for national politics and culture.

Governmentality

A highly influential theoretical perspective derived from the later works of Michel Foucault. Governmentality theorists focus on governing technologies and mentalities that privilege risk and security. The major drawback is that this perspective is largely descriptive.

Governmental sovereignty

The political criteria that defines the legitimate goals and role of the government.

Harm reduction policies

These are policies that prioritise the safety of those who engage in risky and potentially harmful practices. The overall goal is reducing harm—such as the spread of HIV through infected needles—than reducing the prevalence of a given activity.

Hegemony

The dominant idea or means of interpretation. It implies intellectual and moral leadership, and is crucial in the creation of consent.

Humane containment

An aim of imprisonment that claims that, although prisons cannot be

GLOSSARY

justified through rehabilitation, prisons should treat those they contain as humanely as possible. Human rights

A concept that is based on the recognition of the innate dignity of a fellow human beings. Human rights provide a politically acceptable moral framework through which we can critique the infamies of the present, acknowledge human suffering and promote tolerance of diversity. They also have a latent function in promoting the positive obligations and legal duties of the powerful to protect the rights of citizens.

Human Rights Act (HRA)

The Human Rights Act 1998, which came into force on the 2 October 2000.

Ideology

A set of beliefs, values and ideas that shape the way in which people understand the world. For neo-Marxists, ideology is important in winning the battle for hearts and minds on how we should respond to wrongdoers.

Incapacitation

A philosophical justification of punishment that calls for the removal of the offender’s physical capacity to offend. This can be done through the death penalty, banishment or incarceration.

Incarceration

The process of placing people into institutions such as the prison.

Just deserts

A justification of sentencing that is tied to the philosophical justification of retribution. In short: you get the punishment you deserve by receiving a sentence that is proportionate to the offence you have committed.

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200 PENOLOGY Key performance indicators/targets

The targets that the prison service sets each financial year.

Labelling theory

A sociological theory that examines the social consequences of applying negative labels to individuals and groups. Rooted in the symbolic interactionism of George Herbert Mead, penologists have focused on the stigma and dehumanisation that is created through the ‘prisoner’ label.

Labour market

A term used to describe the relations between the buyers (capitalists) and sellers (workers) of labour power. Penologists have been particularly interested in the division of labour (Durkheim) and the consequences of unemployment for the form that punishment takes in a given society (Rusche).

Late modernity

A term used to describe changes in the labour market, families, communications, mass media and culture in Western societies since the 1970s.

Law and order society

The famous argument made by sociologist Stuart Hall that concerns about ‘crime’ and lawbreaking have become central to current forms of political debate.

Legitimacy

The moral and political validity of a given state of affairs. This is a contested concept, with some penologists arguing legitimacy is dependent on: (1) whether people believe something is legitimate; (2) whether a set of circ*mstances adheres to people’s beliefs; or (3) whether validity should be based on normative criteria, such as meeting the requirements of social justice and human rights standards.

GLOSSARY

Less eligibility

A doctrine under which the conditions of imprisonment must not be higher than the living conditions of the poorest labourer. This perspective is tied to the philosophical justification of deterrence.

Managerialism

Highly influential credos that claimed that changes in the management of the criminal justice would lead to improved performance and lower costs.

Marxism

Sociological, political and philosophical perspective, rooted in the work of Karl Marx, that argues against the logic of capitalism, calling instead for forms of political economy and governmental sovereignty that are rooted in meeting human needs.

Mass media

Institutions of communication that broadcast, or distribute, information. The media include newspapers, magazines, the Internet, television, radio and the cinema.

Methodology

The techniques deployed to undertake empirical studies to glean knowledge of social practices. Research methodology can include observation, interviews and questionnaires.

Ministry of Justice

A government department established in May 2007 to head the correctional services (prisons and probation) in England and Wales.

Modernity

A period of time since the eighteenth century that is closely associated with the rise of industrial society, liberal democratic governance and the intellectual drives of the enlightenment.

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202 PENOLOGY Moral

Refers to the ‘right thing to do’ in a given set of circ*mstances.

Moral panic

A term introduced by Stan Cohen in the 1970s to explain how society sometimes overreacts to a person, or group of people, who have challenged societal norms, and calls for a disproportionate increase in social control and repression.

Neo-abolitionism

A modernist and humanist perspective that integrates the insights of symbolic interactionism with the political analysis of criminologies that are inspired by neo-Marxism and the moral framework of penal abolitionism.

Neoliberalism

A term that describes a set of ideologies that privilege the free market. Neoliberalism promotes minimal state intervention for the provision of social welfare, but argues that we should retain a strong authoritarian state.

NOMS

National Offender Management Service.

Normalisation

This term has been applied in two very different ways in penology. Roy King and Rod Morgan used this term in the 1980s to argue that prison life should be as normal as possible in relation to that on the outside. This use of the term is closely linked to debates on prison conditions. The French philosopher Michel Foucault, however, used the term ‘normalisation’ to highlight how penalties have been used in an attempt to make offenders normal. This use of the term is closely associated with the ideas of bifurcation and rehabilitation.

GLOSSARY

OASys

Offender assessment system—used by probation officers to assess risk.

Offender

The term used to describe a person who has breached societal rules or laws.

Offender pathways

Current government initiative around resettlement that aims to identify the criminogenic and social needs of offenders, and to provide policies that can address each one of these factors.

Pains of imprisonment

A term used to describe the inherent deprivations of prison life. Gresham Sykes (1958) described the ‘pains of imprisonment’ for male prisoners as the deprivation of liberty, heterosexual sex, goods and services, autonomy and security. Women prisoners are likely to experience other pains in addition to these.

Panopticon

A design prison by Jeremy Bentham that aimed to maximise prisoner surveillance as a means of instilling discipline.

Parole

A word derived from the French term parole d’homneur, meaning to give your word of honour. Parole was first introduced in the English penal system through the ‘ticket of leave system’ in the nineteenth century.

Penal accountability

The principle that responses to wrongdoers should be premised upon the rule of law, legal guarantees and procedural safeguards rooted in the principles of fairness, transparency and equality. Legal accountability places ethical boundaries and preclusions on the extent of state interventions.

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204 PENOLOGY Penal controversy

This is a strongly disputed and contentious form of penal practice that leads to questions about its moral and/or political legitimacy.

Penal expansionism

Referring to an approach based on increasing prison numbers and prison capacity. This approach currently shapes penal policy in England and Wales.

Penalisation

The application of the penal sanction.

Penality

The study of the ideas, principles, policies and practices of the penal system, alongside their broader socio-economic, historical, intellectual and political contexts. Penality looks to understand punishment and regulation, both within and beyond state institutions.

Penal performance

The measurements used to assess if a prison is meeting the standards set by the prison service. This can be linked to managerial targets or based on Measurement of the Quality of Prison Life surveys, which aim to assess the moral performance of imprisonment.

Penal policy

A collective term for government and criminal justice system documents detailing the main aims, principles and ideas that shape the practices of penal institutions.

Penal reductionism

Calls for a massive reduction in prisoner numbers and the penal estate. Penal reductionists often argue that the capacity for imprisonment should be at no higher than 20,000 places.

Penitentiary

A term used to describe the first convict prisons of the UK in the nineteenth

GLOSSARY

century. Drawing upon the meanings of the Christian term ‘penitence’, the penitentiary was intended to be an institution that would lead those incarcerated to repent of their wrongdoing. Penology

The sociological and philosophical study of penal institutions. In recent times, in the UK, its primary focus has been on evaluating the practices and legitimacy of imprisonment.

Persistency

A term largely applied today to prolific property offending by working-class boys.

Persistency principle

A belief that offenders should be punished not only based on their current offence, but also on past offending. This approach has gained increasing influence with the changes to sentencing following the Halliday Report (2001) and the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

Political economy

The manner in which the economy is organised in a given society.

Political theory

The study of the organisation and exercise of power, including that of the state and government.

Positivism

The belief that scientific knowledge and methods can be used in the social sciences to study humans. Positivism has significant implications for research ethics and methodology. Although it has been intellectually discredited in the academy, positivistic studies still have political and policy influence.

Postmodernism

A theoretical perspective and ‘state of mind’ that is rooted in the belief that we

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206 PENOLOGY have seen an end to metanarratives (big stories) and a loss of confidence in social progress. Without absolute values, we can no longer have certainty in knowledge or uncover the truth. Poverty

Refers to the inability to meet necessary needs and to live a full human life.

Power

A term that refers to an ability to make somebody do something that they would not normally do.

Power/knowledge

A term introduced by Michel Foucault to describe the manner in which people in positions of power have the ability to present certain realities as the truth.

Pressure group

This is an organisation that looks to: lobby parliament for changes in the law; inform the general public on a particular matter; and/or provide specialist support to members of the public who have been affected by a particular problem, such as the families of those who die in custody. A pressure group will reflect certain political beliefs and values.

Prison disturbances

The term sometimes used to describe prisoner rebellion, revolts and riots. Used most famously by Lord Woolf in 1991.

Prisoner populations

This can be measured by various means: the average daily population; the rate per 100,000 of the overall population; examining the numbers who are sentenced to prison each year. These are not objective data, but are produced for the needs of the penal system itself.

Prison works

The argument popularised by Michael Howard and Charles Murray that, if used

GLOSSARY

ruthlessly enough, prison might act as a means of deterrence and incapacitation. Probation

A state institution that was set up to befriend offenders, but which, in recent times, has become focused on risk assessment.

Punishment

The deliberate infliction of pain.

Punitiveness

The extent to which punishment and the punitive rationale is embedded within an individual or culture.

Radical alternatives

The argument made by penal abolitionists that we need to rethink how we respond to social problems. Radical alternatives include promoting forms of redress, social policies that are rooted in the principle of social justice and which look to address structural inequities, and positive community interventions that give young people (the staple diet of the criminal justice system) constructive things to do with their time.

Rational choice theory

Intimately tied with the philosophical justification of deterrence, this perspective is predicated on the assumption that human beings make rational decisions before they break the law. Severity and certainty of sentence are supposed to impact upon this decision-making process

Recidivism rates

The level of reoffending

Reform

(1) A philosophical justification of punishment, which claims that punishment—and specifically imprisonment— can be used to change the prisoner into a better person. Today, this meaning of reform is used interchangeably with

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208 PENOLOGY rehabilitation. (2) Reform is now often used to refer to changes made to penal regimes and attempts to make prisons more humane environments. Rehabilitation

A philosophical justification of punishment, which claims that punishments can be used to restore an offender to his or her previous competency. Although tied to a medical model, the term is used in the broader sense as a means of helping offenders to desist from crime.

Relative surplus population

A group of people who are unemployed, but who can join the workforce in times of economic growth. The term is largely used by Marxist penologists.

Remand

The term used to refer to the time during which a person is held in prison awaiting trial. Remand prisoners are often held in worse conditions than those of convicted prisoners.

Resettlement

The current policy aiming to help prisoners to reintegrate back into the community on release from prison.

Responsibilisation strategies

An argument that, under neoliberal forms of governance, the powerless are given responsibilities rather than rights. Responsibilities are removed from the state for providing security and safety for the general public.

Restorative justice

A way of responding to crimes, problems and harms that is rooted in the principles of mediation and reparation. Since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, restorative justice has become an important part of government policy.

GLOSSARY

Retribution

The philosophical justification of punishment, which claims that people deserve to be punished for their past crimes. Rooted in the principles of ‘two wrongs make a right’, the philosophy explains why we need to respond to wrongdoing, but does not explain why that must entail the deliberate infliction of pain.

Risk

A means of calculating danger, harm, injury, damage or loss. This is now the dominant way of conceiving social problems.

Risk assessment

Assessment of an offender’s likelihood to perform future criminal activity.

Risk society

An influential argument made by German sociologist Ulrich Beck that society is now more characterised by the distribution of ills than it is by the distribution of goods.

Scapegoating

A term that refers to the practice of wrongly blaming somebody for a crime or harm. People from minority ethnic groups and poor backgrounds are most likely to be scapegoated.

‘Security, control and justice’

An approach to penal policy, as advocated by Lord Justice Woolf in 1991.

Social construction

The manner in which meanings are defined, judged and applied to social life. Understandings of social phenomena are shaped by time, place, culture and historical contexts.

Social control

A very broad term, which relates to the mechanisms that are deployed to ensure

209

210 PENOLOGY that people conform to social expectations. This includes informal social controls, such as the family and schooling, and formal social controls, such as the police and prisons. Social exclusion

Often used in place of the term ‘poverty’, social exclusion refers to many ways in which people can be barred from participating in society’s social, economic, political and cultural systems.

Social harm perspective

A radical argument that moves beyond those harms defined by the criminal law to take seriously all harms that impact upon people, from cradle to grave.

Social justice

This principle requires the equitable redistribution of the social product, allowing individuals to meet their necessary needs. Alongside this, it requires a rebalancing of power, the reducing of vulnerabilities, and the fostering of trust, security and social inclusion. This principle supposes that all wrongdoers and social harms are dealt with fairly and appropriately. It also implies recognition and respect for the shared humanity of offenders.

Social problems

Refers to issues that are understood as problematic within their social and historical context. What is included in the definition of social problems depends, at any given time, on the influence of those who have the power to define.

Socio-economic context

The social and economic circ*mstances surrounding a person’s lived realities.

Sociology

An academic discipline that studies society. Sociological theories inform a

GLOSSARY

number of penological studies and the ‘sociology of deviance’. Sub-proletariat

A term used by Marxist penologists in place of the term ‘underclass’, which implies a permanent class that exists below the proletariat. The sub-proletariat consists of economically marginalised and socially excluded people at the bottom of the social hierarchy. They are often members of the relative surplus population (unemployment) and are the people most likely to end up in our prisons.

Transcarceration

When people are moved from one institution, such as the mental asylum, to another, such as the prison.

Treatment and training ideology

The term used to describe the dominant rationale of the prison service in England and Wales from the 1920s until the 1970s.

Utilitarianism

The philosophy that social policies should be based on the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. It has been challenged, because it raises considerable problems for the human rights of minority groups.

Victim

The term used in the criminal justice system to describe the person who has been harmed through a criminal act. The word ‘victim’, however, has been challenged and many feminists have argued that the term ‘survivor’ is a more accurate description.

Welfare through punishment

The argument that social welfare is now provided to the poor and vulnerable only after they have been caught up within the penal web.

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212 PENOLOGY What works

An approach to rehabilitation that is rooted in the principles of cognitive behaviouralism. The ‘what works’ agenda dominates current accredited programmes in prisons in England and Wales.

Woman-wise penology

A feminist approach that is championed by Pat Carlen, who argues that responses to women who offend should be rooted in principles of empowerment.

Wrongdoing

A moral term used to describe inappropriate, harmful and potentially illegal behaviour.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY 217 Home Office (2006) Respect Action Plan, London: HMSO. Honderich, T (2006) Punishment: The Supposed Justifications Revisited, London: Pluto Press. Hudson, B (1993) Penal Policy and Social Justice, London: Macmillan. Hudson B (2003) Understanding Justice, 2nd edn, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Hunt, A and Wickham, G (1994) Foucault and the Law, London: Pluto Press. Ignatieff, M (1978) A Just Measure of Pain, Harmondsworth: Penguin. INQUEST (2006) ‘Statistics on self-inflicted deaths’, available online at www.inquest.org.uk (accessed 30 May 2006). INQUEST (2007a) ‘Briefing: the death of Sarah Campbell’, available online at www.inquest.org.uk (accessed 20 May 2007). INQUEST (2007b) ‘Statistics on self-inflicted deaths’, available online at www.inquest.org.uk (accessed 21 September 2007). Irwin, J (1970) The Felon, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Jacobs, JB (1978) Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. Jewkes, Y (2002) Captive Audience: Media, Masculinity and Power in Prisons, Cullompton: Willan Publishing. Jewkes, Y (ed) (2007a) Handbook of Prisons, Cullompton: Willan Publishing. Jewkes, Y (2007b) Media and Crime, 2nd edn, London: Sage. Jewkes, Y and Bennett, J (2007) Dictionary of Prisons and Punishment, Cullompton: Willan Publishing. Jewkes, Y and Johnson, H (eds) (2006) Prison Readings: A Critical Introduction to Prisons and Imprisonment, Cullompton: Willan Publishing. Jones, H and Cornes, P (1973) Open Prisons, London: Routledge. Kauffman, K (1988) Prison Officers and Their World, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keene, J (1997) ‘Drug misuse in prison’, Journal of the Howard League, 36(1), pp. 28–41. Keith, B (2006) The Zahid Mubarek Inquiry, Vols 1 and 2, London: HMSO (the ‘Keith Report’). King, R and Elliott, K (1977) Albany, London: Routledge Kegan Paul. King, RD and Morgan, R (1980) The Future of the Prison System, Farnborough: Gower Publishing. Learmont, J, (1995) Review of Prison Service Security in England and Wales and the Escapes from Parkhurst Prison on Tuesday 3 January 1995, London: HMSO (the ‘Learmont Report’). Leech, M (1992) A Product of the System, London: Victor Gollancz. Liebling, A (2004) Prisons and their Moral Performance: A Study of Values, Quality and Prison Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

218 PENOLOGY Liebling, A and Price, D (2001; 2007) The Prison Officer, Cullompton: Willan Publishing. Livingstone, S, Owen, T and MacDonald, A (2003) Prison Law, 3rd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lombardo, LX (1981) Guards Imprisoned: Correctional Officers at Work, New York: Elsevier Maguire, M, Vagg, J and Morgan, R (eds) (1985) Accountability and Prisons: Opening Up a Closed World, London: Tavistock. Mathiesen, T (1965) Defences of the Weak: Sociological Study of a Norwegian Correctional Institution, London: Tavistock. Mathiesen, T (1974) The Politics of Abolition, Oxford: Martin Robertson. Mathiesen, T (2006) Prison On Trial, 3rd edn, Winchester: Waterside. Matthews, R (1999) Doing Time, London: Palgrave. McConville, S (1995) ‘The Victorian Prison: England, 1865–1965’, in N Morris and DJ Rothman (eds) The Oxford History of the Prison, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 117–50. Melossi, D (ed) (1999) The Sociology of Punishment, Aldershot: Ashgate Mills, CW (1959) The Sociological Imagination, New York: Oxford University Press. Morris, N and Rothman, D (1998) The Oxford History of the Prison, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morris, TP and Morris, P (1963) Pentonville: A Sociological Study of an English Prison, London: Routledge Kegan Paul. Mountbatten, Earl (1966) Report of the Inquiry into Prison Escapes and Security Command 3175, London: HMSO (the ‘Mountbatten Report’). Murray, C (1984) Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–80, New York: Basic Books. Murray, C (1997) Does Prison Work?, London: IEA. Newburn, T (2007) Criminology, Cullompton: Willan Publishing. Northern Ireland Prison Service (2006) Annual Report, Belfast: NIPS. Parenti, C (1999) Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis, New York: Verso Press. Pratt, J (2002) Punishment and Civilisation, London: Sage. Prison Reform Trust/National AIDS Trust (2005) Joint Report on the Spread of Contagious Diseases in Prison, London: PRT/NAT. Radzinowicz, L (1968) Report of the Advisory Committee on the Penal System on the Regime for Long-term Prisoners in Conditions of Maximum Security, London: HMSO (the ‘Radzinowicz Report’). Radzinowicz, L and Hood, R (1986) A History of English Criminal Law, Vol 5: The Emergence of Penal Policy, London: Stevens. Ramsbotham, D (2003) Prisongate, London: Free Press.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 219 Rawlings, P (1999) Crime and Power, London: Longman. Raynor, P and Vanstone, M (2002) Understanding Community Penalties, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Reiman, J (2007) The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice, 7th edn, Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Rickford, D and Edgar, K (2005) Troubled Inside: Responding to the Mental Health Needs of Men in Prison, London: Prison Reform Trust. Rodley, N (1999) The Treatment of Prisoners under International Law, 2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rothman, DJ (1971) The Discovery of the Asylum, Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co. Ruggiero, V, Ryan, M and Sim, J (eds) (1996) Western European Penal Systems: A Critical Anatomy, London: Sage. Rusche, G (1933) ‘Labour market and penal sanction: thoughts on the sociology of criminal justice’, in D Melossi (ed) (1998) Sociology of Punishment, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 69–96. Rusche, G and Kirchheimer, O (1939; 2003) Punishment and Social Structure, London: Transaction. Rutherford, A (1984) Prisons and the Process of Justice: The Reductionist Challenge, London: Heinemann. Rutherford, A (1993) Criminal Justice and the Pursuit of Decency, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ryan, M (2005) Penal Policy and Political Culture, Winchester: Waterside Press. Ryan, M and Ward, T (1989) Privatization and the Penal System, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Scott, DG (2006) Ghosts Beyond Our Realm: A Neo-Abolitionist Analysis of Prison Officer Occupational Culture and Prisoner Human Rights, Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Central Lancashire. Scott, DG (2007) ‘The changing face of the English prison: a critical review of the aims of imprisonment’, in Y Jewkes (ed) (2007) Handbook on Prisons, Cullompton: Willan Publishing, pp. 49–72. Scott, DG and Codd, H (2008) Controversial Issues In Prison, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Scottish Prison Service (2006) Annual Report and Accounts, Edinburgh: SPS. Scraton, P and Chadwick, K (1987) ‘“Speaking ill of the dead”: institutionalised responses to deaths in custody’, in P Scraton (ed) Law, Order, and the Authoritarian State: Readings in Critical Criminology, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, pp. 212–36. Scraton, P, Sim, J and Skidmore, P (1991) Prisons Under Protest, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

220 PENOLOGY Scull, A (1977) Decarceration: Community Treatment and the Deviant—A Radical View, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Scull, A (1979) Museums of Madness, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Scull, A and Andrews, J (2001) Undertaker of the Mind: John Monro and Mad-Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century England, Berkeley, CA: University of California. Seddon, T (1996) ‘Drug control in prisons’, Howard Journal, 35(4), pp. 327–35. Sellin, JT (1976) Slavery and the Penal System, New York: Elsevier. Sim, J (1990) Medical Power in Prisons: The Prison Medical Service in England, 1774–1989 (Crime, Justice and Social Policy), Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Sim, J (1994) ‘Reforming the penal wasteland? A critical review of the Wolf Report’, in E Player and M Jenkins (eds) Prisons After Woolf: Reform Through Riot, London: Routledge, pp. 31–45. Sim, J (2008) The Carceral State: Power and Punishment in a Hard Land, London: Sage. Simon, J (2007) Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear, New York: Oxford University Press. Sivanandan, A (2001) ‘Poverty is the new Black’, Race and Class, 43(2), pp. 1–6. Social Exclusion Unit (2002) Reducing Reoffending by Ex-Prisoners, London: HMSO. Solzhenitsyn, AI (1963) One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sparks, R, Bottoms, AE and Hay, W(1996) Prisons and the Problem of Order, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Spierenburg, P (1984) The Spectacle of Suffering, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stern, V (1989) Imprisoned by Our Prisons: A Programme for Reform, London: Unwin Hyman. Straw, J (1997) Prison Reform Trust Lecture 1997, London: Prison Reform Trust. Sykes, G (1958) Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Taylor, AJP (1968) ‘Introduction’, The Communist Manifesto, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Thomas, JE (1972) The Prison Office, London: Routledge Kegan Paul. Toch, H (1975) Men in Crisis: Human Breakdown in Prison, Chicago, IL: Aldine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 221 Toch, H (1977) Living in Prison: The Ecology of Survival, New York: Free Press. Tomlinson, M (1996) ‘Imprisoning Ireland’, in V Ruggiero, M Ryan and J Sim (eds) Western European Penal Systems: A Critical Anatomy, London: Sage, pp. 194–227. Vagg, J (1994) Prison Systems: A Comparative Study of Accountability in England, France, Germany and The Netherlands, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Van Swaaningen, R (1986) ‘What is abolitionism?’, in H Bianchi and R van Swaaningen (eds) Abolitionism: Towards a Non-Repressive Approach to Crime, Amsterdam: Free University Press, pp. 9–21. Van Swaaningen, R (1997) Critical Criminology: Visions from Europe, London: Sage. Van Zyl Smit, D and Dunkel, F (eds) (2001) Imprisonment Today and Tomorrow: International Perspectives on Prisoners’ Rights and Prison Conditions, 2nd edn, London: Kluwer Law International. Von Hirsch, A (1976) Doing Justice: The Choice of Punishment, New York: Hill and Wang (Report of the Committee for the Study of Incarceration). Wacquant, L (2008) Deadly Symbiosis, Cambridge: Polity Press. Walliman, N (2006) Sage Course Companion: Social Research Methods, London: Sage. Walmsley, R (2006) World Prison Populations List, London: International Centre for Prison Studies. Webb, S and Webb, B (1922) English Prisons Under Local Government, London: Longman, Green and Co. Weiss, R and South, N (eds) (1998) Comparing Prison Systems: Toward a Comparative and International Penology, Amsterdam: OPA. West, DG and Farrington, DP (1973) Who Becomes Delinquent?, London: Heinemann. Windlesham, L (2001) Responses to Crime: Volume 4—Dispensing Justice, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Woodco*ck, J (1994) Report of the Enquiry into the Escape of Six Prisoners from the Special Security Unit at Whitemoor Prison, Cambridgeshire, on Friday 9 September 1994, London: HMSO (the ‘Woodco*ck Report’). Woolf, LJ (1991) Prison Disturbances April 1990: Report of an Inquiry, Part I, London: HMSO. Woolf, LJ (2002) ‘Making punishments fit the needs of society’, Prison Service Journal, (142), pp. 6–9. Worrall, A and Hoy, C (2005) Punishment in the Community, Cullompton: Willan Publishing. Wyner, R (2003) From the Inside, London: Aurum. Young, J (1999) The Exclusive Society: Social Exclusion, Crime and Difference in Late Modernity, London: Sage.

222 PENOLOGY List of cases Becker v Home Office [1972] 2 QB 407, [1972] 2 All ER 676 Edwards v United Kingdom (2002) 35 EHRR 487 Ezeh and Connors v United Kingdom (2002) 35 EHRR 28 Hirst v United Kingdom (2004) 38 EHRR 40 Raymond v Honey [1983] 1 AC 1, [1982] 1 All ER 756 Stafford v United Kingdom, Application no. 46295/99 [2002] ECHR 2002IV, 115

List of statutes The following Acts of Parliament are listed in chronological order. Transportation Act 1718 Hulk Act 1776 Penitentiary Act 1779 Act of Union 1800 (Scottish) Prison Act 1839 Prisons (Scotland) Administration Act 1860 Prison Act 1865 Prisons (Scotland) Act 1877 Probation of Offenders Act 1907 Criminal Justice Act 1948 Prison Act 1952 Prison Act (Northern Ireland) 1953 Criminal Justice Act 1982 Criminal Justice Act 1991 Human Rights Act 1998 Criminal Justice Act 2003

in d e x

Tables are given in italics.

A abolitionism 194 actuarialism 194 Adam Smith Institute 49 administrative penology 19, 194 Amnesty International 56 antisocial behaviour 143–4 appreciative inquiry (AI) 52–3 Assize of Clarendon 70 Asylums (Goffman) 112 Australia 60–1 authoritarian populism 194 B Barak-Glantz, Israel 113 Bauman, Zygmunt 34–5 Bean, Philip 20, 22 Beccaria, Cesare 16 Bentham, Jeremy 17, 203 bifurcation 194 Black/minority prisoners 104–5 Blackstone, William 72 Bloody Code, The 69–71, 194 “Bloody Sunday” 78 Bottoms, Professor Sir Anthony 136 Box, Steven 38 Brazil 61 British Crime Survey (BCS) 100–1 C Campbell, Sarah 117–8 carceral society 194–5 Carlen, Pat 39, 41, 212 causation 195 chapters 168–9 China 62 Christie, Nils 34 civilization 195

Civilizing Process, The (Elias) 33 Civitas 49 Clemmer, Donald 112, 123 Cohen, Professor Stanley 27, 35, 54, 71, 113, 136–7, 141–3 Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) 133–4 community penalties 140, 195 comparative analysis 58–9, 195 conclusion 179 condoms 122 “conscious collective” (Durkheim) 31–2 contestability 195 Corporate Plan 1993–6 (Prison Service) 77 correlation 195 Counselling, Assessment, Referral, Advice, Throughcare Service 121 Crawley, Elaine 113–4 Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public (Home Office) 86 crime/criminalisation 195–6 Criminal Justice Act 1948 137–8 Criminal Justice Act 2003 87–8, 139–40 criminal justice system 196 crisis 196 culture 196 D dangerous and severe personality disorders (DSPD) 117 dangerousness 196 dark figure 196 decarceration 140–3, 196 decency 196 dehumanisation 196 democracy 197 denunciation 197

224 PENOLOGY deterrence 21–3, 197 deviance 197 Discipline and Punish (Foucault) 30, 39 Discovery of the Asylum, The (Rothman) 35 diseases 122 disinfecting tablets 122 dissertation 171 Doing Justice (Hirsch) 25 Doing Prison Work (Crawley) 113–4 Dostoevsky, Theodore 52 drink-driving 23 du Cane, Sir Edmund 69, 73 Durkheim, Emile 29–32 E Elias, Norbert 33 enlightenment 197 Essays on Crimes and Punishment (Beccaria) 16 European Convention on Human Rights 92, 132 European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) 133 examinations 185–92 examples “prison violence” 177 “prison working” 176 F false negatives/positives 24, 197 feminism 39, 41, 197 feudalism 36 Finland 62–3 Fitzgerald, Mike 17, 54 Flew, Professor Antony 18 Foucault, Michel 30, 39–41 functionalism 198 G “gardening state” (Bauman) 34 Gardiner Committee 79 Garland, David 33 Gattrell, V.A.C. 33 Gladstone Committee 74 globalisation 198 Goffman, Erving 110, 112–3 governmental sovereignty 198 governmentality 198

H Haan, Willem de 27 Hale, Chris 26 Halliday Report (2001) 139 harm reduction policies 198 hegemony 47, 198 Heidensohn, Francis 39 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) 127–8, 134–5 Her Majesty’s Prison Service 76–7, 96–7, 211 Hirsch, Andrew von 25 Howard, John 48, 69 Howard League 48–9, 115 Howard, Michael 148 Hudson, Barbara 157 Hulk Act 1776 72 human rights 14, 92, 199 Human Rights Act 1998 92, 131–2, 199 Human Rights Watch 56 humane containment 198–9 I ideology 199 incapacitation 24, 27, 199 incarceration 199 Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) 128–9 industrialisation 36 inquest 50–1 Institute for Economic Affairs 49 introduction 179 J Jacobs, James B. 110–1 Japan 63 “just deserts” 199 K Kauffman, Kelsey 114 Keith Report 54 Keith, The Honourable Mr Justice 54 key performance indicators 200 King, Roy 152 Kirchheimer, Otto 35–7 L labelling theory 200 labour market 14, 200

INDEX 225 late modernity 200 law and order society 200 Learmont Report (1995) 77 lecture notes 162–3 legitimacy 14, 200 less eligibility 201 lex talionis 26 liberalism 35 Liebling, Alison 52–3, 86–7, 91, 114 M Making Punishments Work (Halliday) 87 managerialism 14, 76–7, 90–1, 201 Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime: A New Approach (Carter) 88 Marxism 35–6, 201, 211 mass media 201 Mathieson, Thomas 17, 24, 142, 155 May Committee 75 media, the 467 memory aids 182–3 mercantilist capitalism 36 methodology 201 Millbank Penitentiary 72–3 Mills, Charles Wright 53 Ministry of Justice 96, 201 modernity 30–1, 34, 201 Modernity and the Holocaust (Bauman) 34 Moore, John 50 moral/moral panic 202 Morgan, Rod 152 Mountbatten Report (1966) 74 Mubarek, Zahid 54, 105 Murray, Charles 146–7, 148–50 N Narey, Martin 104, 196 National Offenders Management Service (NOMS) 88–9, 96–7, 202 National Probation Service (NPS) 138 needle exchange programmes 122 neo-abolitionism 157–8, 202 neo-Marxism 38–9 neoliberalism 202 nerves 185 No More Prison 50 normalisation 202

Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) 78–9, 106–8, 108 note-taking 164–5 O OASys (offender assessment system) 203 Offender Pathways 93, 203 offenders 203 opus publicum 38 P panopticon 203 parole 203 penal abolitionism 152–3, 155–6, 158 penal accountability 203 penal controversy 204 penal expansionism 204 penal performance 204 penal policy 204, 209 penal pressure groups 48 penal reductionism 151, 192, 204 penal reform 14–5 Penal Reform International (PRI) 49, 56 penalisation 204 penality 204 penitentiary 204–5 Penitentiary Act 1779 72 penology 205 Pentonville Prison 73 persistency/persistency principle 205 political economy/theory 205 Politics of Abolition, The (Mathieson) 17 poor, the 36 positivism 205 postmodernism 205–6 poverty 206 power/knowledge 10, 206 pressure group 206 Price, David 114 prison accountability 126–35 alternatives to 14, 158, 190–1 average daily population/prison statistics 148, 149 benchmarking 83 Black/minority prisoners 104–5 conclusions on imprisonment 66–7 conditions 114–5

226 PENOLOGY prison cont. decency 91 definition 7 developments shaping imprisonment 59–60 diseases 122 “dispersal policy” 75 disturbances 206 drug use 120–1 experience of 9–10 health 115–7 key performance indicators 83–4 legitimacy 156–7 management models 113 moral performance 91–2 pains of 203 performance 82 population 98–100, 99, 100, 109, 206 population by country 56 population social background 102–3 “positive custody” 75 private sector 84–5 radical alternatives 207 reform/rehabilitation 207–8 statistics 43–6 welfare through punishment 94, 211 women 105–6 young people 103–4 Prison Act 1865 73 Prison Act 1952 98–9, 130 Prison Community, The (Clemmer) 112 Prison Governors Association (PGA) 51 Prison Officer, The (Price/Liebling) 114 Prison Officers’ Association (POA) 51 Prison and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) 129–31 Prison Reform Trust (PRT) 49 Prison Rules 1999 130 Prison Secrets (Cohen/Taylor) 54 Prison Service Strategic Framework, The (1998) 77–8 Prison on Trial (Mathieson) 17 “prison works” 206–7 Prisons (Scotland) Act 1877 79–80 Probation 137–8, 207 Probation of Offenders Act 1907 137 Psychological Survival (Cohen/Taylor) 113 public protection 15

punishment 6–7 definition 207 five rules 17–8 justification 18–9 power 15 reform 19–20 rehabilitation 19–21 thinking beyond 26–7 Punishment and Social Structure (Rusche/Kirchheimer) 30, 35–6 Q quotations 178 R Radzinowicz Report (1968) 75 Ramsbotham, Baron David John 125 rational choice theory 207 Raymond v Honey (1982) 131 Recession, Crime and Punishment (Box) 38 recidivism 23, 207 Reducing Crime, Changing Lives (HMSO) 88 rehabilitation 15, 212 relative surplus population 208 remand 208 research 167–8 resettlement 208 Respect Action Plan 2006 144 responsibilisation strategies 208 restorative justice 27–8, 208 retribution 25–6, 209 revision 180–3 Rickwood, Adam 118 risk society 209 risk/risk assessment 15, 209 Rodley, Sir Nigel 126 Rothman, David J. 35 rule breaking 6 Rusche, Georg 30, 35–7 Rutherford, Professor Andrew 147–8, 152 S scapegoating 209 Scholes, Joseph 117 scolds bridle 70 Scott, David 114

INDEX 227 Scottish Prison Service (SPS) 79–80, 108, 109 Annual Report 2006 108 Scull, Professor Andrew 43, 137 self-inflicted deaths (SIDs) 117–8, 119 Sellin, J. Thorsten 37 seminars 165–6 Shaw, Stephen 129–30 Sim, Professor Joe 54, 76, 147, 157 slavery 37–8 social construction 209 social control 209–10 social exclusion 210 Social Exclusion Report (SER) 92–3 social harm perspective 210 social justice 15, 210 social problems 210 Society of Captives, The (Sykes) 112 socio-economic context 210 sociology 210–1 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander 52 South Africa 64 Spierenburg, Pieter 33 States of Denial (Cohen) 54 “stewardship model” 127 Stewart, Robert 54 structure 175–6 sub-proletariat 211 summary notes 181 supervision 170–1 Swaaningen, Rene van 152, 157 Sykes, Gresham 111, 112, 123, 203 T Tackling Drugs in Prison (Home Office) 121 targets 200

task management 186–7 tatooing 122 Taylor, Laurie 113 Tchaikovsky, Chris 51 Tilt, Richard 104 time management 186 transcarceration 211 Transportation Act 1718 71 “tributary” principle 173–4 Tumin, Sir Steven 125–6 U United Nations (UN) 134 United States of America 65–6 utilitarianism 21, 211 V Venezuela 65 victim 211 W Walmsley, Roy 57 “we blew it thesis” (Cohen) 23 welfare through punishment 94, 211 “What Works” prison programmes 89–90 Women In Prison (WIP) 51 women offenders 105–6, 175, 212 Woodco*ck Report (1994) 77 Woolf Report (1991) 75–6 Woolf, The Right Honourable Lord Justice 69, 75, 86, 126, 209 wrongdoing 212

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