Prisons & Punishment

The Essentials

David Scott, Nick Flynn

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781446273463
• eBook ISBN: 9781473905207
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Covering all the key topics across the subject of Penology, this book gives you the tools you need to delve deeper and critically examine issues relating to prisons and punishment.

The second edition:

• explores prisons and punishment within national, international and comparative contexts, and draws upon contemporary case studies throughout to illustrate key themes and issues
• includes new sections on actuarial justice, proportionality, sentencing principles, persistent offending, rehabilitation, and abolitionist approaches to punishment
• features a

The book also includes a useful study skills section which guides you through essay writing and offers hints and tips on how you can get the most out of your lectures and seminars. This is the perfect primer for all undergraduate students of Criminology taking modules on Prisons and Punishment or Penology.

PART I

PENOLOGY

1.1 thinking like a penologist

1.2 sources of penal knowledge

1.1 THINKING LIKE A PENOLOGIST

Core areas

introduction to the book

running themes in penology

‘fugitive thought’: a brief introduction to penology

thinking outside the box

Running themes

• Social divisions

• Power

• Imagination

INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK

Welcome to Prisons and Punishment: The Essentials. 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 academic disciplines, such as philosophy, 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 decide what best to read and in what order. The intention of Prisons and Punishment: The Essentials is to provide you with a one-stop, 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 and activities. In short, the aim of the book is to help you to get the most from your studies. If this text can 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 problems can be conceived of or addressed, then it will have achieved its aim—and perhaps much more.

The book introduces some of the common principles and concepts of prison, community sanctions and punishment. 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. 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. We also hope 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, Prisons and Punishment: The Essentials should help you to challenge common-sense and populist assumptions about prisons and punishment, and to think critically about the subject matter.

To support you in your studies, the book provides bullet points of key arguments and debates. Alongside this, it uses the following unique features to help you develop insights into penological thought.

• Core areas and running themes Each chapter starts with a list of core areas and central themes in penology.

• Key penologists At the start of many chapters, important penologists are highlighted, each of whom has made a significant contribution to the central themes under discussion.

• Summary boxes These highlight and summarise key issues on a given topic.

• Tips and common pitfalls Tips boxes appear throughout the chapters and offer you key factors to remember, along with advice on what to do and how to best answer a question. Common pitfalls remind you of common mistakes and give you some indication of what not to do. These boxes will help you to question dominant assumptions and common-sense ideas on prisons and punishment.

• Questions Dispersed throughout the book, you are given example questions and indications of how these might be answered.

• Taking it further At the end of many of the chapters you are given details of recent debates, penal controversies or examples of in-depth readings on the topic area.

• Bibliographies These annotated bibliographies offer you a description of some of the best texts to read when developing your knowledge and undertaking background reading for an assignment.

The book is divided into four main parts.

Part one, chapter 1.1 provides you with 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 mind-set of penal experts and you are introduced to the kind of terminology that they use. Chapter 1.2 assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the key sources of penal knowledge that you will come across as you try to make sense in your studies of prisons and punishment.

Part two begins with a discussion of the philosophical and sociological accounts of imprisonment and punishment. The book is largely focused on prisons and punishment in the UK, but chapter 2.2 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, policy and organisational structures of penal systems in the UK, before moving on to consider some of the problems and controversies that are encountered in prison life and the current means by which penal systems are held accountable. Part two concludes with a discussion of probation and non-custodial forms of punishment and a review of three alternative visions of the future: penal expansionism; penal reductionism; and penal abolitionism.

Part three offers you further guidance with your studies. 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. The chapters in this part present checklists and bullet points to help you focus your attention on key issues, and provide examples to demonstrate the use of such features as structure, headings and continuity.

Part four concludes the book with a glossary that contains brief definitions of a number of key penological terms and a bibliography listing the sources cited in the book.

RUNNING THEMES IN PENOLOGY

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:

Alternatives to prison Non-custodial ways of dealing with wrongdoing. These can involve community penalties and other ways of dealing with harms and wrongs that do not adopt the punitive rationale.

Governmentality A political term to denote new systems of ordering and governance in contemporary society. In penological terms, the term is used to describe new approaches to the control of crime and how these are shaped by changing economic, social and cultural imperatives.

Human rights A normative principle that is based on the recognition of the innate dignity of a fellow human being. This can involve the recognition of legal entitlements and of the wrongdoer’s shared humanity, and acknowledgement of all human suffering.

Labour market The thesis that there are strong links between the form and nature of punishment, and the needs of the labour market.

Legitimacy The moral and political validity of the exercise of penal power. The criteria defining what a legitimate response to wrongdoing entails are hotly contested, and there are a number of different approaches to thinking about penal legitimacy. These include theories from Emile Durkheim (on ritualism and the lack of legitimacy), Max Weber (on the belief in legitimacy and authority), David Beetham (on how institutions must conform to people’s beliefs), and Gramscian and (neo-)abolitionist perspectives that call for philosophical and normative criteria for evaluating the rightfulness of punishments.

Less eligibility The belief that conditions of imprisonment must not be higher than the living conditions of the poorest labourer. Adoption of this doctrine has major implications for the dehumanisation of wrongdoers.

Managerialism A credo that claims that better forms of management, rooted in the principles of efficiency, effectiveness and economy, can solve the current penal crisis and provide services that are better value for money. It is an ethos that has dominated public services in the UK over the last twenty five years.

Pains of imprisonment The inherent deprivations of prison life, as coined by Gresham Sykes (1958), who described the ‘pains of imprisonment’ for male prisoners as the deprivation of liberty, of heterosexual sex, of goods and services, of autonomy and of security.

Penal reform The argument that the prison can be improved and made more humane or effective. Penal reformers are often humanitarians who believe that prisons can have good living conditions and constructive regimes, and can rehabilitate, if used for the appropriate people.

Penological imagination The application of creative, ‘big’ thinking to the study of prisons and punishment. Imaginative understandings of penal matters move beyond data-driven statistical analysis in order to explore relationships between penality and the human experience of it. The penological imagination is a quality of mind, a particular way of approaching, thinking about or interpreting complex issues and their possible resolution. Try to use your imagination to uncover wider social, political and economic factors that might influence who is punished and why.

Power to punish The definition and application of the penal rationale to discipline, exclude or control human behaviour. Penal critics have highlighted how the power to punish is disproportionately deployed against the poor and powerless.

Public protection The claim that prison and community penalties exist to contain dangerous offenders and those people who pose a considerable threat to ordinary members of society. Public protection is a major justification for increasing levels of prison security.

Rehabilitation A justification of punishment, which claims that prison can be used to restore an offender to his or her previous competency. The term is now often used interchangeably with other ‘re-words’ such as ‘re-integration’, ‘re-settlement’, ‘re-entry’, as well as ‘reform’.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Advertisement
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Companion Website
• Part I   Penology
• Part II   Core areas of the curriculum
• Part III   Study writing and revision skills
• Part IV   Additional resources
• Index