Prison Policy in Ireland

Politics, Penal-Welfarism and Political Imprisonment

Mary Rogan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780415616188
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136811449
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is the first examination of the history of prison policy in Ireland. Despite sharing a legal and penal heritage with the United Kingdom, Ireland's prison policy has taken a different path. This book examines how penal-welfarism was experienced in Ireland, shedding further light on the nature of this concept as developed by David Garland. While the book has an Irish focus, it has a theoretical resonance far beyond Ireland. This book investigates and describes prison policy in Ireland since the foundation of the state in 1922, analyzes and assesses the factors influencing policy during this period and explores and examines the links between prison policy and the wider social, economic, political and cultural development of the Irish state.

It also explores how Irish prison policy has come to take on its particular character, with comparatively low prison numbers, significant reliance on short sentences and a policy-making climate in which long periods of neglect are interspersed with bursts of political activity all prominent features.

Drawing on the emerging scholarship of policy analysis, the book argues that it is only through close attention to the way in which policy is formed that we will fully understand the nature of prison policy. In addition, the book examines the effect of political imprisonment in the Republic of Ireland, which, until now, has remained relatively unexplored.

This book will be of special interest to students of criminology within Ireland, but also of relevance to students of comparative criminal justice, criminology and criminal justice policy making in the UK and beyond.

1

UNDERSTANDING PRISON POLICY

The sociology of punishment and policy-making

Introduction

This book has three key aims: to investigate and describe prison policy in Ireland since Independence (1922), to analyse and assess the factors influencing policy during this period, and to explore and examine the links between prison policy and the wider social, economic, political and cultural development of the Irish state in these years.

These aims place this work at the intersection of two theoretical and methodological schools within penology: the sociology of punishment and the more recently established area of policy analysis. As well as drawing on the perspectives of both positions to inform this work, this book seeks to show that the best and fullest understandings of prison and broader penal policy in any jurisdiction can be created through an application of the methods and insights provided by penologists and scholars of policy analysis. This chapter explores and critiques the theoretical literature on the sociology of punishment and policy-making, placing the Irish situation within it.

The sociology of punishment

A large body of work has been accumulated within what is termed the sociology of punishment. A number of disparate theories can be identified within this school of thought. However, they have a unifying central feature: that is, the aim to ‘explore the means by which society, at any given point, governs itself and maintains order’ (Zedner 2004: 76).

A variety of theoretical perspectives have assessed the functions of the prison outside that of the control of crime. These have linked the operation of penal forms to particular ends, including the formation of a ‘disciplinary society’ in the Foucauldian sense (Foucault 1977), regulation of economic or labour markets, in the Marxist tradition (Melossi 1981; Rusche and Kirchheimer 1968), ideological dominance (Mathiesen 2000), increasing ‘social control’ (Cohen 1985) or social solidarity following Durkheim (1997). Other theorists, notably Elias (Elias and Jephcott 1994) and Spierenburg (1984) have linked penal changes to underlying social impulses and trends, particularly the increasing ‘civilisation’ and democratisation of society.

In recent years, another body of theory has developed within the sociology of punishment which has as its aim a multi-variate analysis of punishment and its forms.

Cultural accounts and the prison

A theoretical perspective most associated with the last two decades, ‘cultural accounts’ of punishment focus less on the function of punishment, or its role in social order. Instead, these interrogate and explore punishment, in the words of Zedner, ‘as the product of cultural mentalities and prevailing sensibilities and as contributing to the larger formation of culture’ (Zedner 2004: 82). This project has the venerable aim of providing a broad-ranging account of punishment and penal institutions and endeavours to fulfil it by looking at punishment and penal forms from a variety of perspectives.

A number of works in the sociology of punishment utilise the concept of culture and the tools of cultural analysis and a rich body of work has developed tackling a wide variety of topics within the rubric of studies of punishment from a cultural perspective. Cultural accounts have become the latest growth industry in criminology, being utilised in the exploration of many forms of crime, the links between culture ‘industries’ and crime, as well as methods of crime control and responses to crime. It is the latter type of investigation that most concerns this work.

Garland and ‘culture’

One of the most influential theorists working in the field of cultural assessments of punishment is David Garland. His works, most notably Punishment and Modern Society (Garland 1990) and, particularly, The Culture of Control (Garland 2001), have employed explicitly cultural methods, with Punishment and Welfare (Garland 1985) also arguably exhibiting elements of such a methodology. Garland has become, to some degree, the ‘straw man’ or flag-ship of this approach, depending on one’s view of the enterprise. As such, an interrogation of his methods and influences illuminates many of the pertinent issues surrounding cultural studies of punishment and the prison.

Garland posits that punishment is a complex cultural artefact that is informed and influenced by broader conceptions, values, ideas, beliefs that constitute the nature of wider social mentalities and sensibilities.

In his earliest explicit analysis of cultural accounts of punishment, Punishment and Modern Society, Garland argued that cultural patterns shape the manner in which we think about crime and punishment, providing intellectual frameworks by which we determine what is considered acceptable as forms of punishment and, more specifically, what the particular distinctions, categories and types within that range should be.

In this assessment, Garland’s hypothesis is that his kind of sociology of punishment takes account of cultural forces to provide further illumination as to why our penal responses have developed in the way they have. Overall, for Garland, ‘the specific culture of punishment in any society will always have its roots in the broader context of prevailing (or recently prevailing) social attitudes and traditions’ (Garland 1990: 210).

The manner in which punishment communicates meaning and is a constituent of culture is also ambitiously explored by Garland. To investigate these mechanisms, Garland employs the anthropological terminology of ‘mentalities’ and ‘sensibilities’. ‘Mentalities’ refers to the phenomena of cognition – the conceptions, values, categories, distinctions, systems of belief and frameworks of ideas that operate within the penal system, normative schemes or guides to conduct such as justice, morality or manners. ‘Sensibilities’ refers to ways of feeling, or emotional configurations. When applied specifically to punishment, ‘sensibilities’ delimit the extent to which and manner in which punishment can be deployed. They provide the parameters of emotional tolerance for degrees and types of punishment. Tonry (2001a, 2001b, 2004) also uses the concept of ‘sensibilities’ in both his analysis of American penal culture and his argument that there are many important ‘unthought thoughts’ or insights that have been forgotten or overlooked in contemporary US and UK penal policy.

The idea of investigating the linkages between punishment and prevailing social attitudes or normative positions is so uncontentious that, in Garland’s own words, it is ‘hopelessly banal’ (Garland 1990: 200). However, the way in which this idea is actually executed is the subject of debate and argument.

Interrogating ‘culture’

Garland’s analysis of cultural accounts of punishment and its methods and functions was already well developed in Punishment and Modern Society. However, as rigorous as his original assessment was, it did not have a significant impact upon the penological academy in the way that his later work stimulated such enormous discussion and debate (Young 2002b), though arguably, the picture of prison policy in the post-war era has been shaped largely by his assessment.

Garland returns to the conception of culture in his much quoted and highly influential The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Garland 2001). In this he takes an overtly cultural approach towards what he sees as a convergence in criminal justice cultures in the USA and UK since the 1970s, a convergence that he argues involves increasing punitivism and a new ‘culture’ of control.

However, as Zedner elucidates ably, Garland’s work in The Culture of Control makes little reference to his original account of culture and its use in studies of punishment put forward in his 1990 writings (Zedner 2002: 255).

Perhaps prompted by the criticisms regarding the use of cultural methodologies and the claims of The Culture of Control and to clarify the manner in which he employs the concept of ‘culture’ in a number of other pieces (Garland 2002, 2005a, 2005b), Garland reappraises the use of culture in sociological analyses of punishment and the value of integrating cultural analysis into ‘the explanatory project of a multi-dimensional sociology of punishment’ (Garland 2006: 419). Garland reiterates, correctly it is submitted, that cultural investigations are vital to a proper understanding of the context in which penal practices exist, but, again, it is submitted wisely, that such investigations must be integrated into ‘multidimensional’ accounts of such practices, in order to ensure that social explanation remains the focus in sociologies of punishment.

Multi-dimensional social theory

Garland seeks to avoid the difficulty presented by the lack of clarity about what ‘culture’ means. Such uncertainty is over whether it refers to a ‘cultural’ sphere, independent of other forces that shape penal institutions such as social, political or economic, or whether it means something that encompasses all traditions and values within a social group or society, in essence the whole social world.

Garland presents a remedy to this dilemma, arguing that culture should be studied as part of a multi-dimensional social theory, utilised as an integral component of sociological or historical explanation, but not as an alternative. He states that his own work has always, in fact, been conducted along these lines.

There is no doubt that the influence on punishment of matters such as styles of thought, structures of feeling, values, sensibilities, motivations, and the public representations of these is part of the cultural dimension of penality. This, it is argued, presents the theorist with the opportunity of examining why symbols, values or ideas come to motivate conduct. However, these conceptual phenomena are one dimension of punishment to be studied among others. The actual practices of punishment, the manner in which policy is implemented and the way in which people talk about penal reform and change must remain in the foreground of discussion. These investigations must, concomitantly, be framed within wider discussions of alterations in sensibilities and mentalities that they display. A multidimensional social theory must explore them all and Garland is correct to clarify what may have been a confusion of his own making.

Garland’s conclusions and recommendations can be read as being prompted by a desire to re-tie the sociology of punishment to a firm historical and sociological base. Garland’s assessment, it is submitted, views ‘culture’ not as a separate form of analysis or method, but rather another name for ‘multi-disciplinarity’. As Ryan states, ‘the best academic writing in criminology has always drawn on a number of established (and related) disciplines, history, politics and sociology, to name but three’ (Ryan 2007: 438).

This is vital to ensure both precision in analyses of prison policy, and also that all matters impinging upon the creation of that policy are taken seriously. The fact that policy is at the centre of this study means that such a synthesised analysis is particularly necessary to take account of the political factors involved in the creation of that policy, with the economic constraints these also imply, as well as social transformations and cultural elements. This is uncontentious. However, while multi-disciplinarity may be the most satisfying approach to the investigation of punishment and prison policy, we are no further on in unpicking what exactly that entails. This book argues that policy analysis can provide the missing link in understanding the nature of crime control and penal policies.

One of the concerns that appeared to motivate Garland’s restatement of the use of cultural analysis in the sociology of punishment is that of ensuring that such sociology is fully explanatory and, by implication, historically accurate, and that ‘feelings’ and ‘sensibilities’ identified are done so correctly. This is patently a direct response to the criticisms made of the type of analysis employed in The Culture of Control: that of the ‘grand narrative’ which ignores the particular, and essentially glosses over elements of the penal story that do not fit in with an overarching assessment.

These difficulties bedevil much of the cultural enterprise, and arguably are not remedied by substituting ‘multi-disciplinary’ assessments in the stead of cultural investigations. The investigation of long periods of time by reference to single categories of assessment, such as ‘penal-welfarist’, or ‘late modern’, will inescapably mean that subtle variations are overlooked and individual events are bundled together in an attempt to evince a coherence to what may have been piecemeal incidents without any such intended linkage, though this is a challenge that sociological accounts of imprisonment share with all historical narrative.

This has been the most penetrating and significant criticism of Garland’s work, particularly The Culture of Control; that it suffers from over-breadth and generalisation, glossing over localisms, peculiarities and in-depth analysis.

Convergence and conflict: explaining change

Related to this are the criticisms of influential works that have identified a form of ‘convergence’ in policy, or a ‘common’ criminal justice culture, particularly between the US and the UK and that in such accounts local peculiarities and discordant trends are erased in the pursuit of analytical ‘neatness’ and the presentation of a coherence and programmatic development that is unwarranted. A further criticism that can be levelled at such analysis, and also that of Foucault, is that it denies or erases the impact and importance of individual actors and agency in the creation and formation of policy and ‘movements’ in the dispensation of punishment.

Punishment in prisons is a judicially sanctioned action, carried out by various administrators and actors within prison sites. The regimes are created by officials in these sites and within the civil service more broadly, under the general direction of a minister responsible to a Cabinet and to the electorate. Prison policy, while undoubtedly rooted in the social, political and cultural make-up of a state, is very clearly and pointedly based in administrative and legislative decisions, which are all subject to the particular processes, influences and constraints of the political arena.

Jones and Newburn in particular warn that cultural accounts such as those of Garland, when taken to extremes, can diminish the role of political agency in the creation of policy (Jones and Newburn 2002, 2005b). O’Donnell also advocates the adoption of a narrower focus in discussions on penal change, noting the differences and nuances both between and within jurisdictions, to ‘give impetus to the “scholarly dialetic” between the general and the particular’ (O’Donnell 2004b: 205).

There is another body of work identified by Jones and Newburn that carries out a very close and detailed analysis of individual penal cultures or instances of penal change. Such accounts of criminal justice policy and its transformation tend to have as their central concern the role of political choice and the ‘politics’ of crime control, with less of an emphasis on structural-cultural factors. One example of this is the towering four-volume work of Windlesham: Responses to Crime (Windlesham 1987, 1993, 1996, 2001), which combined extensive documentary analysis and reading of policy development and political negotiations in various areas with an assessment of the ‘mood’ of government at various times in relation to criminal justice matters, though the particular interpretation by Windlesham of some events has been questioned (Ryan 2003).

Historical sociology and recovery

On the face of them, these projects involve entirely polarised intellectual endeavours, methods, questions and even zones of analysis, both geographically and intellectually. One deals with the rough and tumble of politics, while the other employs the ostensibly loftier tools of structural and cultural analyses.

A good contrast between the two is offered by Loader and Sparks when they compare Windlesham’s work with that of Garland in The Culture of Control, arguing that the former represents ‘a painstaking contemporary history of political debates, policy formations and legislative battles … an internal, Westminster-centric treatment of political events and processes’, but which, unlike that of Garland, gives ‘scant reference to either the economic, social or cultural contexts within which they are played out, or the criminological and political ideas that relevant actors implicitly or expressly mobilise and tussle over’ (Loader and Sparks 2004: 11).

Though preferring the latter approach overall, believing it to provide the more compelling assessment, Loader and Sparks note a number of problems with Garland’s methodology, and suggest that what they describe as a ‘historical sociology’ of crime policy is ultimately the most illuminating mode of assessment as it takes on board both the actions of those who affect penal policy and the social context in which those actors operate.

Loader and Sparks, advocating a methodology they describe as ‘historical recovery’, insist that the actual political choices, conflicts, influences, and self-conceptions of penal agents and actors are as important to an accurate understanding of penal change as the broad cultural shifts and structural movements. Garland’s work in Punishment and Welfare (Garland 1985) in particular, was arguably an early example of an attempt to take real account of the political discourse, influences and motivations of penal reformers and policy-makers at the time which he studied, as well as tracing these against the backdrop of broader societal change. Cohen’s Visions of Social Control also predates these criticisms, appearing in 1985. In this book, Cohen criticised what he saw as a sociological tendency towards overgeneralisation, of being ‘often quite insensitive to variations, differences and exceptions’ (Cohen 1985: 240), a point that could be taken directly from a critique of The Culture of Control.

It is often overlooked at this remove that Garland’s 1985 work involved a close reading of political documents, policy positions and penal practices a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Understanding Prison Policy
• 2. From Independence to the ‘Emergency’
• 3. The ‘Emergency’
• 4. The 1950s
• 5. The 1960s
• 6. The 1970s
• 7. The 1980s
• 8. The 1990s
• 9. Prison Policy Since 2000 and Beyond
• 10. Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index