Countering catastrophic criminology

Abstract

This article argues that accounts that envisage rupture in penality tend to overplay the coherence of ‘modern’ punishment and underplay the inconsistency of current developments. It suggests that this problem stems in large part from a failure to appreciate the ‘braided’ nature of modern liberal punishment, which is always about both punishment and reform. Part of the ‘secret’ to this is found in David Garland's earlier work in which the ‘welfare sanction’ appears as a compromise between modernist scientific expertise and liberal legalism and individualism. Normative regulation coupled with punishment in this bargain. As a result, even during the heyday of the welfare sanction and at rehabilitation's height, punitive and deterrent penalties remained important. Similarly, there is substantial evidence that increasingly widespread approaches such as restorative justice, therapeutic justice and risk-need models carry a newly revised correctionalism into the present. Rather than conceive recent changes as indicative of a watershed in penal rationality and practice, this article suggests that it is more important to think about the ways in which neo-liberal assaults on the modernist side of this equation have transformed its character.

Punishment in Society: The Improbable Persistence of Probation and Other Community Sanctions and Measures

“…To that end, we begin with a brief overview of some influential and important accounts of the history of community sanctions, before elaborating what we take to be the key 'adaptations' which have characterised community sanctions in their quest for legitimacy in late modern societies and penal systems. As our analysis will reveal, we broadly concur with Hutchinson's (2006) (and others') observation that developments in the penal field have been characterised by a braiding of 'old' and 'new' forms and functions: the old tends to survive (or adapt) alongside the new, rather than being supplanted by it. Our analysis seeks to draw out what we see as the key characteristics or dimensions of contemporary community sanctions which are more or less visible (albeit to different degrees and in variable combinations) across multiple jurisdictions.…”

What Can We Learn From The Portuguese Decriminalization of Illicit Drugs?

“…The counter-example of Portugal, which has seen both an extension of the welfare state and a reduction in the penalization of vulnerable drug users, supports critics who have argued that such general theorizing underestimates the complexity of developments, both at home and abroad (Hannah-Moffatt 2002;Zedner 2002;Young 2003;Loader and Sparks 2004;Hutchinson 2006). The appeal of the punitive turn in contemporary penality is by no means universal.…”

Rehabilitation in the Punitive Era: The Gap Between Rhetoric and Reality in U.S. Prison Programs

“…The first of these arguments is that there is not necessarily any direct correspondence between penal rhetoric and actual practices; in criminal justice studies, as in other areas of law and society research, scholars have shown that political dramas or official statements do not always translate into practices because the forces driving rhetoric may be entirely different from those driving practices (Carroll 1998; Lynch 2000; McNeill et al 2009; Scheingold 1984). Some scholars have argued that penal practices have always “braided” punishment and rehabilitation into the mission and operating practices of the criminal justice system and that what changes with the political winds are the public justifications for correctional practices (Goodman 2010; Hutchinson 2006; Robinson 2008).…”

“…Prison policies, for instance, may be affected by a number of organizational factors that may or may not be in alignment with changes in the national mood, including funding streams, availability and political power of staff members, the involvement of federal courts, and institutional ability to implement programs. Furthermore, in some cases, what changes is the name and justification for practices, rather than the acts in question (Goodman 2010; Hutchinson 2006; Robinson 2008). Particularly with a field as guarded and isolated as prison administration, it should be no surprise that what happens inside them is at times noticeably different from the public debates (Pratt 2002).…”