Progressive penality as performance

Abstract

Scotland's prison population remains stubbornly high despite reforms to sentencing and community penalties (most recently in 2016). Seeking to advance the debate on punishment in Scotland, we use empirical data to support a novel theoretical synthesis of the ‘agonistic framework’ and ‘performative regulation’. We argue that these reforms appear oriented towards decarceration, without substantively engaging with the drivers of imprisonment, and hence exemplify the ‘performative’ nature of much Scottish penal policy. The ‘performance’ is shaped by countervailing political constraints on the Scottish Nationalist government, amid continued debate over independence – but truly progressive penal policy requires radical and substantive responses to the problems that punishment seeks to address.

Criminal disenfranchisement: Developments in, and lessons from, Scotland

“…Accordingly, we should locate the dis/enfranchisement debate within contemporaneous political context; here, a post-devolution, 'nation building' Scotland. The dis/enfranchisement debate, we argue below, sits at a boundary between conflicting value-commitments ('inclusion'/'exclusion', 'progressiveness'/ 'toughness') which are linked to arguments about Scotland's national character, political formations and potential constitutional futures (see also Buchan & McNeill, 2023).…”

“…There is enduring conflict between the idea of prison as a desirable site for rehabilitation and treatment, and recognition of it as a fundamentally disruptive and disintegrative mode of containment (McAra, 1999, p.369). At least since the report of the Scottish Prisons Commission (2008), there has been a level of consensus over the need for ‘decarceration’ in Scotland, and an acknowledgement that Scotland's high imprisonment is at odds with many of its expressed penal values (Buchan, 2020, p.85; Buchan & McNeill, 2023).…”

“…In the context of the Scottish National Party's (SNP) project of ‘democratic renewal’, and a prison service publicly committed to promoting citizenship for all prisoners (Scottish Prison Service, 2013), we might ask why these ‘boundaries’ have not been pushed further. Accounts of policy evolutions since 2007 have suggested a degree of government avoidance of ‘controversial’ criminal justice moves because of the value placed on nurturing the widest possible support for independence, and an associated ‘capacity building’ project (Annison, 2015, p.49; Buchan & McNeill, 2023; McAra, 2008).…”