Pastoral penality in 1970s Ireland: Addressing the pains of imprisonment

Abstract

The Republic of Ireland is said to be an exception within Anglophone penal history, where it resisted the punitive turn of the 1970s and a more pragmatic and dispassionate penal politics prevailed. Even during the 1970s, when Ireland displayed tendencies towards penal welfarism, this is argued to have been more rhetorical mimicry than commitment to the principles of offender transformation. This article first interrogates these claims by providing an in-depth historical and sociological analysis of penal culture and transformation in the prison system in Ireland in the 1970s. By conducting this analysis in conversation with penological theory, in this case penal welfarism, the study presents a new concept of parsimonious penal power: pastoral penality. Pastoral penality was a more humane penal culture that emerged during the 1970s in Ireland. It is hoped that these historical and theoretical contributions developed throughout this paper contribute to the shifting and deepening of our USA and UK-centric understandings of punishment history and patterns.The key features of penal welfarism are presented first. This is followed by an overview of the main conventions in Irish penal and social historiography. The substantive historical findings from the research are then outlined. The evidence reveals a counter-narrative of an intentional and highly principled penal transformation led by those who held the power to imprison. The concept of pastoral penality is then forwarded. This was a more humane and empathetic approach to imprisonment that reflects Ireland's socio-cultural and political context, shaped by a conservative political ethos, Catholic values and a communitarian class structure. A wider lens then permits us to also to see that this form of penality was contingent on Ireland's distinctive field of social control, however. The article concludes by acknowledging the structural and practical limits of pastoral penal welfarism but emphasising that while pastoral penality is non-abolitionist it operates with a deep scepticism of the prison and an awareness of the harms it causes.

Exceptional states: The political geography of comparative penology

“…This depiction as exceptional may have distracted us from a more generative account of contemporary Irish penal history. Rather than being stagnant in comparison to other Englishspeaking penal policies, recent research shows that Irish penal policymakers were actually actively engaged in maintaining and producing a 'pastoral penal culture' (Brangan 2019b). And in Scandinavia a small industry of anti-exceptionalism scholarship has developed.…”

“…This literature can help us rethink our taken-for-granted penal concepts. In this diverse array of scholarship, we see the importance of examining differences in meanings and practice of prisoner categorisation and rehabilitation (Brangan 2019b, Super 2011, dimensions of prison control (Birkbeck 2011), the collective nature of prison life (Darke 2018), and prison climate (Martin et al 2014). Some combination of these kinds of middle-range concepts would help capture the mixed enterprise that makes up a prison system and gives it a distinctive national character.…”

“…This same intention should apply to our study of penal politics, namely, taking a more grounded interest in the 'multidimensional' forms (Garland 1990) of political culture. Generic ideologies of neoliberalism, conservativism, liberalism and populism, may be prevalent cross-nationally, but each may be realised in different ways depending on how they have hybridised with their social context (Brangan 2019b;Jones and Newburn 2005;Rosen 1989) and institutional arrangements (Savelsberg 1994). Rather than categorising political systems based on ascendant ideological and instrumental thinking, this means investigating how these ideas work in practice to shape penal policies.…”

Development as a historical component of the United Nations’ crime policy agenda: From social defence to the Millennium Development Goals

“…Within the field of criminology, our historiographic approach is somewhat distinct from the four traditions identified by Lawrence (2016) although elements of our analysis of UNODC's efforts to promote the crime-development nexus which are the focus of the sister article (Blaustein et al, in press) certainly resonate with cultural approaches that examine 'the notion of crime as a constructed social and cultural discourse' (Lawrence, 2016: 29). 3 The analysis presented in this article however was influenced most directly by previous historical studies of other UN organizations (for example, Murphy, 2006); criminological studies of crime policy development in England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland (see Brangan, 2019aBrangan, , 2019bLoader, 2006;Rock, 2002); and critical policy sociologists who study 'the conditions that make the emergence of a particular policy agenda possible' (Gale, 2001: 387).…”

Reestablishing the Foundations: Investigating the Theoretical and Practical Boundaries of Criminology

“…Drawing broadly on this research, scholars tend to recommend more rehabilitative efforts to increase desistance, specifically aimed at "therapeutic surveillance" and providing support for inmates rather than additional punishment and exclusion (Brangan, 2019;Gray & Smith, 2019;Mazur & Sztuka, 2019). Though probation and community supervision programs are often seen by policy makers as rehabilitative efforts, some scholars argue that in fact the expansion of programs such as these actually "widen the net" of punishment possibilities, in effect becoming a further extension of the penal system (Western et al, 2015;Phelps, 2018).…”